Japan has been a late adopter when it comes to smartphones, but it's catching up quickly - already more than half the population owns one.

    In 2012, only about a quarter of Japanese used them, most being perfectly happy with their everyday mobiles.

    But people have now realized smartphones are just too useful to ignore, especially because they can be used to read newspapers and manga, the Japanese comics which have gone global, without straining your eyes.

    More than half of all Japanese now own a smartphone and the proportion is rising fast.

    With that rise has grown another phenomenon - the smartphone walk.

    It's that glacial pace people only adopt when they're staring at a phone screen - their head down, arms outstretched, looking like zombies trying to find human prey.

    Researchers have found people don't just walk more slowly when they're on smartphones, their field of vision is reduced to 5 percent of what it should be.

    Recently the Japanese mobile giant NTT Docomo released a simulation of what would happen at Shibuya, Tokyo if everyone crossing was doing the smartphone walk.

    There would be more than 400 collisions every time, it said, and most likely just 36 percent of people would get across. Orderly Japanese society as we know it, would be at an end.

    If things got truly bad at Shibuya, Tokyo, the police would just start patroling the crossing shouting at people to look up. Until that does happen, though, he's going to carry on ranting.

    Japanese phone etiquette is in fact better than anywhere else in the world - hardly anyone speaks on their phones on trains, and teenagers wouldn't dare broadcast music out of one.

    But now, people have become so addicted to their smartphones that they don't seem to mind if they rudely bump into others while walking.

     Words to Learn 相关词汇    

    使疲劳

    shǐ píláo

    strain

    be subjected to tension or stress     

    咆哮

    páoxiāo

    rant

    speak violently

     日本进入智能手机和"低头走路"时代

    智能机在日本的使用时间并不长，但是它正快速蔓延—已经有超过半数的日本居民人手一部智能机。

    2012年，只有四分之一的日本人使用智能机，那时大多数的人还十分满足于他们的日常手机。

    但是人们现在意识到智能机的种种不容忽视的优势，尤其是能用来不累眼睛地读报和看漫画。日本漫画早已走向全球。

    已经有超过半数的日本居民人手一部智能机，与此同时这个比例正在快速增加。

    随之而来的是另一种现象：由智能机带来的低头行走一族。

    人们只有在盯着手机屏幕时才会如此缓慢地移动：低着头，伸出手臂，像一个想要猎食人类的僵尸一般。

    研究发现人们在玩智能机时不仅仅行走更为缓慢，他们的视角范围也降到了原来的5%。

    近期，日本移动巨头NTT多科莫公司发布了一个模拟实验，展示了在东京涩谷如果每个过马路的行人都采用这种“低头行走”模式所带来的后果。

    实验指出，过马路的行人会有400多次碰撞，而只有36%的人能够顺利过马路。这样一来，我们所熟知的那个有序的日本社会将会走向终结。

    在涉谷，如果低头行走一族真的非常严重，警察就会开始在十字路口巡逻，唤人们抬起头来。然而，除非这种情况真的发生，警察才会转为大声咆哮。

    日本的使用手机的礼节实际上比世界其他地方更好，在日本，几乎很少看到有人在火车上打电话，年轻人也不敢用手机放音乐。

    不过，现在他们对智能机如此上瘾以至于走路时鲁莽地撞上别人也不管了。