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Shades of a Japanese, Star Wars phone droid? (classic green NTT public payphone, early 1980's) (media.piefed.social)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/cassettefuturism@lemmy.world
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I'm liberating this one from the evil empire. The original poster recently saw this one at Nagoya, evidently one of the few-ish remaining ones in service. Their post title was:

Orange backlit LCD, check! Phone card slot, check! Japan in 1982 was the future! (An endangered species spotted at Nagoya station)

More examples & angles:
https://www.google.com/search?q=classic+green+NTT+public+payphone+from+Japan&udm=2

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[–] 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Literally a cassette deck to an extent. Back in the day, you would buy phone cards and insert them into the front-loading slot. The display would track how many minutes you had left. It was so ubiquitous in the 1980s & 90s that you would get phone cards that had custom designs and your favorite J-Pop idols on them.

Japanese pay phone accept phone cards to this day.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 months ago

    Oh yeah, look at that. I hadn't even paid attention to that (major) detail. :S

    I've seen specialised charge cards used in a number of cities in my country for various things, some niche, some very public, but didn't know that such was the case with payphones.

    I imagine that such a card used for a TARDIS would be rather pricey. :P

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