I am not good with phones, and they are not good with me. I probably have one of the lowest mobile phone bills in Tokyo (about 1500 yen / month), no fixed phone, no answering machine or voice box. And, as friends and family can attest, I hardly ever call.

I am also trying to make a point of not replacing my five-year-old handset. It cannot do anything (except make and receive calls), but it works. It's not a trick, it's a Sony (a real Sony, from back in the day, before they merged their operations with Ericsson).

The only problem are the batteries. An hour-long phone interview will be cut short after around 15 minutes. I actually own a USB recharger, having brought that along would have helped. So much for first impressions. That surely established me as a technology-savvy professional.