In a quiet technology-driven change, young Japanese are developing super-quick thumbs, the fruit of childhoods spent furiously thumbing hand-held, computer games and now young adulthoods spent thumbing out e-mail messages on cell phone (mobile phone) keypads. "Their thumbs have become bigger, more muscular," said Sadie Plant, author of a new report "On the Mobile," a study of cell phone habits of people in eight major world cities. Talking from Birmingham, England, she said that Japan's oya yubi sedai, or thumb generation, was "the most advanced in the world."
    "What impressed me in Tokyo was their without even looking at the keypad," she said. Television stations in Japan have held thumbing speed contests. Last year, one young woman was clocked thumbing out 100 Chinese characters in a minute, similar to typing 100 words a minute, a speed .
    While thumb-operated computer games have been for years, thumb-operated, Web-capable phones are new. The number of Japanese cell phones equipped for e-mail has jumped to 50 million today, about 40 percent of the population, from 10 million two years ago. With the United States years away from such mass use of cell phones fro messaging, Japan has become a national experiment in .
    Sending text messages appeals to Japan’s passion for consideration of others. Messages can be sent and received silently in university lectures, business meetings and in crowded commuter trains where . Aki Goto, 21, a college student who carries a tiny American flag and a hot red KISS ME sticker on her phone, said of her text messages: "I am not bothering others when they are in the middle of doing something. The receivers check them whenever .
    Using a cell phone that calls up the most frequently used characters from memory, Goto said: My thumb has become faster and more skillful." Thumb skills are giving rise to . Akemi Konno, 20, another college student, paused from reading her e-mail to watch a middle-aged man pecking at his cell phone with an index finger. She commented dryly, "I think he should use a PC."
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(1) ability to tap in a message
(2) sometimes irritates the people around the user
(3) strictly limited
(4) talking on cell phones is preferred to e-mailing
(5) thumb snobs
(6) skill in receiving an e-mail
(7) normally achieved with all fingers flying
(8) intensive thumb use
(9) it is inconvenient for them
(10) talking on cell phones is often banned
(11) limited use of thumbs
(12) thumb-haters
(13) they feel like it
(14) around