Government Alert to stay home during Golden Week

A friend on Facebook needed translation help and I was finally able to use my Japanese. Yay!

Thought you guys might like seeing the original message:

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I hate names. Took me way too long and way too many ā€œtrial and errorā€ readings to figure out that this was Kanagawa.

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Yeah, sorry, I should have mentioned that my friend is stationed there and was worried it was a missile alert or something.

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I remember getting missile alerts. Those were the days instead of worrying about dying from a horrible disease one could worry about getting annihilated by an atomic blast.

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One idly wonders which government office worker came up with that ā€œGW is Gaman Weekā€ slogan. :stuck_out_tongue:

I remember getting these messages on my phone when I was in Chichibu while Hagibis was making landfall last week. I was kind of impressed they knew how to contact my phone considering Iā€™d only arrived in Japan the day before.

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Im pretty sure while using roaming on your native countryā€™s sim card in another country, since it automatically switches servers to the roaming provider in Japan, there is no difference from sending a message to your phone than a native sim card. Same thing happened to my cell while I was traveling to Turkey.

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Looks like your friend needs to up his wk level.

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As a Telecom Engineer, I can tell you itā€™s using the emergency broadcast facility built into both radio base stations and handsets. It will go out to any handset on the network, even one without a SIM card. Itā€™s the same mechanism that letā€™s you make an emergency call on a handset without service or a SIM card.

The broadcast can be targeted to a specific region based on the cell tower LAI (Location Area ID) or all base stations on a particular network for nationwide broadcasts.

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Yeah, I give him a hard time about being stationed in Japan for over 10 years and not picking up Kanji. lol

Although it is kind of easy to live in that bubble on-base.

Does this mean that even if there is a device someone brought overseas, without a sim card inside at all, for example me bringing my phone bought in the usa to japan with no sim card inside, will still receive the message while in japan? How can it detect the device if it is not connected to any network?

Jesus 10 years and he feels no need? Surely thereā€™d be an inkling of motivation to pick it upā€¦

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As long as the handset radio supports the frequencies that the towers are on it will try to register. The phone doesnā€™t know yet that itā€™s not on its home network until it sends the registration message so itā€™s always going to send that message whenever it powers on. And the registration is always initiated by the handset because the network doesnā€™t know about itā€™s existence before that.

Even before eSIMs, it was mandated that cellular networks support emergency calls so a phone without a SIM will still try to register for emergency services at the very least.

Fun fact: Almost anywhere in the world, dialing 112 on a mobile phone will connect you to emergency services. Even in countries where thereā€™s a different number, thatā€™s the default emergency cut through on mobile switches to my knowledge (Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, ZTE, Nortel). In most cases, the normal emergency number is just routed to that.

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I guess that bubble is hard to get out of. His spoken Japanese isnā€™t bad, but I guess he just doesnā€™t do a lot of reading.

This is very interesting and useful to know, thank you!

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Hey!! I live in Kanagawa, how come I didnā€™t get a message? :angry:
the alert noise is scary though so maybe please donā€™t .-.

It is? I thought it was kinda nice. From memory.

Maybe thereā€™s another emergency alert noise? If itā€™s the same sound as the alerts I got during the typhoon last year, it was three ear-piercing WHOOPs that made my heart race every single time. D: I mean it sounds like an emergency which is good, but alsoā€¦ :scream:

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It probably depends on your phone. Canā€™t seem to find a way to make the phone give me the noise now without an actual alert going on so as to refresh my memory, but I seem to recall that it made me think someone was about to politely announce that the train on platform three would be departing in ten minutes.

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:open_mouth: Actually, youā€™re right! I found a video on youtube that has it and yeah, it actually does sound pretty nice. I guess it probably makes me panic because if I hear it itā€™s a situation that I should probably be wary of. :sweat_smile:
Now Iā€™m wondering what alert sound I was thinking of??? Maybe my old cell phone?

EDIT:
I found it! I was thinking of the earthquake alert sound! YouTube video with the sounds here!

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Ah yes, thatā€™s the sound I remember. Didnā€™t think to check YouTube.

A Pavlovian response? :stuck_out_tongue:

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