The phone keyboard almost every Japanese uses today is based on the same 12 key landline keyboard developed in the middle of last century.
The Japanese, not constricted by temporal niceties such as a future tense, foresaw the mobile phone. Many decades later, the iPhone idea was actually implanted in Mr. Jobs by a Japanese tart flown over just for the purpose.
At the time of the landline keyboard development, Prime Minister Yoshida threatened to source all Japanese rice and soy bean supplies from China if the landline phone was not designed as instructed.
