Beyond the phone booth, I saw food samples and a brand-name store

Payphone in Ginza

I wondered who would use them, but Ginza still has phone booths in many places with public phones inside. With the spread of cell phones, there are fewer public phones than before. I wonder what kind of people call from public phones. I can only think of people who are trying to do something guilty (kidnappers, for example), but there is a good reason why public phones are placed on every street corner.

In Japan, it is required by law to install one public phone every 500 meters in urban areas and every 1 km in suburban areas, in order to provide emergency priority calls in times of disaster, and to make calls available to people who do not have fixed-line or cell phone subscriptions. Considering the widespread use of cell phones, it is safe to say that most of them are for use in emergency situations such as disasters.

It is true that cell phones do not seem to work well in times of disaster. At the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake, it was relatively easy to get through to a landline phone even if you couldn't get through to a cell phone. Public telephones are still being maintained in case of emergency. Nevertheless, the number of pay phones is still on the decline. I think Clark Kent used a phone booth when he transformed into Superman, but I wonder if he is having trouble now that there are fewer places where he can transform.

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