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The
student’s responsibility, as owner of this particular
tomogachi, was to interact with Anne-chan throughout
the day (by pushing a number of very, very small buttons
clustered on the front of the case), ensuring that the
little ghost continued to feel loved and cared for.
While the tomogachi fad quickly
burned itself out in Asia and the West, the presence
of virtual, ghostly “friends” (tomodachi
is Japanese for friend, thus with slight alteration
we arrive at the trade name tomogachi) informed by a
vibrant mix of Western and Eastern visual and prose
narratives is still quite popular in Japan (Morton).
Now this exchange of media ghosts has gone wireless
through Internet-driven cell phones that allow teenagers
to trade tomogachi-like characters from one phone to
the other as a companion to their continual stream of
text messaging. These exchanges of ghost-like animated
characters is a vital part of this youth-driven wireless
culture (called keitai culture in Japan—keitai
is the Japanese word for these specific kind of gaming/text-enabled
cell phones) as these youthful cell phone owners take
part in large-scale multi-player games while commuting
to school or when filling dull moments at a part-time
job.
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