E-mailing Japan cell phones via internet

I need to e-mail other peoples' mobiles, but cannot from my dinosaur cell phone.

Can anybody tell me how I can do it via the internet, any website addresses, or if there is a cheap pay-as-you-go mobile phone I can buy.

Many thanks

just send email from your PC.
for example, if a person uses DoCoMo phone and his email address is suzuki.taro@docomo.ne.jp,
send email to suzuki.taro@docomo.ne.jp.
nothing special.

note that the receiver has to allow email from your mail address (or domain).
more and more phone users are using "domain-specific reception" feature to avoid spam, in which case your email may be blocked unless allowed explicitly.

Avoid sending lengthy email or attachments to phones as they are charged by data amount received (or transmitted). Keep it as short as possible.

Should you prefer exchanging email with a phone, Vodafone Japan and TU-KA provides email-capable prepaid phones.

Can anyone tell me how to send a text massage from my computer to a cell phone in Japan? My cell phone won't do it...

Chris,
Did you not read the reply by "meringue4" above? Just send an email to the person's email address as you would to any other.

What encoding should one use then? ISO-2002-JP? Shift-JIS? TRON? UTF-16? UTF-8? Or do the phones support a multitude of encodings and languages?

I have no idea about text messaages (short mail, SMS).
I'm afraid you canot send text messages to Japanese phones via email or from foreign phones, but I'm not sure.

Text message is not very common in Japan as email is more useful. Also many people are refusing text messages since they are used as spam these days.

is the encoding of phones in japan.

Which do you use OE or webmail sevice to send your e-mail?
Which carrier does your friend use in Japan, docomo, vodafone, or tuka?
And where are you from? In some countries, you can find services which enable you to send your SMS to Japanes phone.

I believe they have docomo phones. I live in the US, and here we just use the cell number + the carrier's name.net to get from pc to cell phone. I doubt it's the same in Japan? Some wireless companies offer international text messaging, but mine is not one of them. Maybe this is just too complicated! I have found places on the web which would allow me to pay to send SMS messages to Japan, but I don't know if any of these are reliable.

|here we just use the cell number + the carrier's name.net to get from pc to cell phone. I doubt it's the same in Japan?

It was email address convention for Japanese phones (HisPhoneNumber@docomo.ne.jp etc) but it no longer is, because it is easily targeted by spammers.
Now carriers assign a random initial email address to the subscribers and recommend them to change it to another address that cannot be easily guessed by spammers.

Thanks so much for this info. I knew it wouldn't be as easy as it seems. Any suggestions on how to send a message? Do you recommend any of the websites that promote this service?

Chris,
I don't understand this obsession with SMS. You could at least try emailing phone-number@docomo.ne.jp, but as mentioned above, few people use this form nowadays. Can you not telephone the person to find out their mobile email address? Without that, you're stuck, just as you would be trying to email a PC user.

Yes, I could do that if I weren't trying to surprise this person (not that that's your business). Instead of providing answers that are sarcastic, you could try being helpful like the others on this page -- it is, after all, why people come to this site.

I would like to know where the login page for docomo.ne.jp is. This is the login for the email. I would really appreciate your help.

I'm afraid you may be somewhat misunderstanding. docomo.ne.jp is an e-mail only domain and its mailboxes can be retrieved only by NTT DoCoMo cell phones.

you did not mention in your first post that it was to be a surprise........think you owe Dave an apology.

Hi can someone tell me how to use PC yahoo account email to cell phone to Japan in english text
can the person in Japan recieve my mail in English content or we need to use roman format or hinakana

Tom,
I think you'll find that your question has already been answered in the earlier replies above, but just to repeat, if you know the recipient's email address (e.g. [name]@ezweb.ne.jp), then you just send an email as you would to any other email address. If you only know the person's phone number, then you will have to ask them what their email address is.
Japanese mobile phones are capable of handling English text as well as Japanese.

actually i use yahoo.mail send to yahoo.jp is okay, but i send to my friend cell phone, it didn't show return mail or fail delievry, but they just did not get it.i go to www.ezweb.ne.jp and read the instruction how to email to cell phone but they don't have English instruction i do'nt know what it means.can you tell me what it is the restriction my friend can recieve email though cell phone in japan no problem.

Tom,
Sorry for the late response. There is no special procedure for sending email to mobile phones, and I have no problem sending email from both yahoo.com and yahoo.co.jp addresses to my ezweb email address. The only thing I can think of is that the recipient has set their phone to block email from certain addresses or domains.