For Australian mobile phone users, using technology that is inferior to that of their Japanese counterparts, this is a glimpse into the near future. Accessing the internet on Japan's mobile phones has become so fast and easy that many young people have forsaken computers.

In 2004, Tim Clark, from the University of Southern California, made a prescient observation in the Japanese Media Review: "A surprising number of Japan's high school students graduate without learning how to use a personal computer." Between 2000 and 2006, the proportion of Japanese 20-year-olds using home PCs to access the internet plummeted from 23.6 per cent to 11.9 per cent, according to figures released by Net Ratings and published in Facta online. This means 20-year-olds now make up the same proportion of the total as 50-year-olds.

The plunge could be only partly explained by ageing in Japan's population and growth in PC use by other age groups. Akihiro Utada, an internet analyst who has written several books on Japan's digital culture, says that "until Japanese people leave school, their primary means of communication is the keitai.

"After that, unless you're a university student, I don't think you really need to access the internet by computer here. "For most Japanese the Roman alphabet keyboard is unfamiliar and unnatural, unlike for Americans and Europeans." Internet browsing capabilities in Japan have improved markedly in recent years.

Most Australian websites, on the other hand, are not yet available in slimmed down, mobile-phone-compatible versions. The Australian mobile industry has developed some mobile-friendly sites with technology such as Telstra's Next G and i-Mode, which is based on technology licensed from Japan's biggest provider, DoCoMo, and was introduced in Japan in 1999. Mobile phone company 3 has developed a mobile version of eBay. But for the most part, accessing websites not developed by the telcos remains expensive, complicated and relatively slow. This is expected to change in coming years. In Japan, gadget-obsessed 20-year-olds now have mobile phones that can surf between three high-definition PC websites at a time, handle Flash software, and download Word, Excel and PDF files at rapid speed.

But the problem is that their corresponding ability with PCs and keyboards has regressed to the point where it matches that of their parents. Many of the country's 4 million young part-time workers cannot afford PCs, and are being permanently locked out of white-collar work because of their ineptitude with computers. Last November, when users of au (KDDI) mobile phones (Japan's second biggest mobile provider after DoCoMo) were having trouble sending emails, they received messages saying, "The message could not be sent (110)".

About 5700 users called the police, who are listed under the same number in Japan. The police were not impressed by the mix-up. "PC users wouldn't have done something so thoughtless because they would have seen error codes before," Facta says. "As PC illiteracy increases, common sense will decrease." Justin Norrie is an Age correspondent in Tokyo.