Tokyo Lives - Tokyo Phones!

Tokyo display flagship for Japan telecommunications giant KDDI reveals the future of telecom -- your cell phone and your lifestyle are one and the same and organically evolving. 5 spiraling floors display future concept designs, the hottest phone displays, at-home media interaction (controlled by one's phone of course) and a wireless cafe on top. All in the effort to display KDDI's research on advanced technologies that they hope will form a future technological foundation for improvement of communications systems infrastructure.
And that future lies in organic creative technology. For the musician in all of us, they have concept cell phones that turn into keyboards, drum sticks, or harps. Also featured is a "dog phone" designed by avant-garde sculptor, painter and novelist Yayoi Kasuma. On display are power adapters that look like vines and mini video projectors the size of a credit card. One floor features the sexiest life-style phone displays for the athlete, the party girl, the student, or the accountant. And although featured brand names are Kyocera, Hitachi, Sanyo, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, and Panasonic, they all have the same rectangular shape that either flip or slide, yet none look like phones in the States made by the same manufacturers. One display housed US phones made by Samsung, Panasonic, Kyocera that appeared so utilitarian black in contrast with the rainbow of cool colors offered in Japan. But the only reason they were on display was to feature the US' superior streaming video via cellphones which show 40 frames per second verses 15 frames in Japan. The only difference is one must pay in the States for this feature whereas it's included in Japan. And what about the suffering iPhone in Japan? I asked showroom host Yasuhiro Sekigouchi what he thought, "It's cool, but I don't have one. It is limited by the lack of video taking options and multi-media messaging. But I do have three friends in Tokyo that own one and they enjoy it."

The building also features "Wired Cafe 360" on the top floor with tropical plants and casual woodsy atmosphere that contrast with the neon rich buildings up and down the streets of Harajuku. Wireless hotspots for laptops are hard to find in Tokyo where most use their cell phone for all interactions and web surfing. Since forming in 1953 as a domestic phone company, KDDI has evolved into tech-savvy giant that effectively synthesizes our creative lifestyle choices with our inherent ability to communicate with one another.