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Mobile phones have created a sexual revolution in Japan, making the communication devices as much about flings as they are about rings, according to Shukan Bunshun (4/19).
Gone are the days when nervous lovers had to make calls to a family phone, running the risk of an irate relative getting on the other end of the line.
Instead, with over 100 million Japanese now using mobile phones, people can now get in touch with whoever they fancy at any time from any place, especially through the phones' e-mail functions, which ensure 24-hour access.
"Without mobile phones, I don't think there'd be as much infidelity going around as there is now," a 37-year-old woman tells Shukan Bunshun.
While mobile phones have paved the way for easier starts to relationships, they have also opened the door to more blunders, as one 30-year-old woman can attest after her phone played an integral part in her having one last fling before she married. Though she used it to contact the guy she was playing around with, the woman was also in the habit of sharing her phone e-mail messages with her fiance.
"I forgot one day to wipe out an e-mail I'd received from my lover. It was a really racy mail and I accidentally showed it to my boyfriend," she says.
A 29-year-old woman underwent a similar experience after her partner found a steamy mail from her bit on the side hinting at trying out some S&M.
"It was saying he'd tie up my arms and feet," she says. "I couldn't make any excuses. I told myself that I need to come up with some sort of code."
Mobile phones can also lead to unexpected openings for new love.
"I meant to mail a love letter to one of the women at work, but accidentally mailed it to the next name in my phone's address book, which turned out to belong to another cute woman in the office," a 53-year-old man tells Shukan Bunshun. "It turns out that she was interested in me too, and next thing we knew, we were off to a love hotel. It was an incredibly lucky blunder!"
Then there was the 37-year-old woman who used her phone to contact an online matchmaking site, only to mistakenly send details of a planned tryst to her husband's account. The husband sent a close friend to check up on the meeting, only for it to have unexpected results.
"I told the friend I'd sleep with him if he promised to tell my husband that I hadn't been unfaithful," the woman says. "I'm still playing around with the friend even now."
Others weren't so fortunate in their experiences with mobile phone matchmaking sites.
"I put an ad up on one site and the woman who answered it turned out to be my wife," a 38-year-old man says. "This is the absolute truth! It was pretty hairy after that."
Mobile phone cameras have also proved to be watchdogs for potential love cheats.
"I happened to bump into my old boyfriend and we went to a have a cup of tea together. A friend of my husband spotted us, took a photo with his phone and sent it to my husband with a message saying that I was playing around on him," a 35-year-old woman says.
A 27-year-old man was also caught courtesy of photos he took using his own phone.
"My wife found the photos I'd taken in the act during a steamy session with my old girlfriend," he says.
Although the communication tool has changed from fixed line to mobile phones, people are still doing pretty much the same thing as always. What has probably changed is the frequency, like the 37-year-old married woman who sent about 50 e-mails a day over her mobile to the married man she was seeing on the side.
"I don't know whether we'd have continued if it wasn't for mobile phones," she tells Shukan Bunshun. "Without mobile phones, there would not be the infidelity going around that there is." (By Ryann Connell)
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