Tofugu.com – Wonky Japanese Language and Culture

Wow Mixi, way to put a damper on things. About two months ago, I put up a tutorial on how to get started with Mixi so that you could use it to practice your Japanese. Now it seems like Mixi is pretty much off limits (for now) to foreigners without a Japanese cell phone email addresses. This theoretically means you have to be living in Japan, and own a cell phone if you want to be able to join Mixi now.

Here are the new rules:

1. You have to confirm a Japanese cell phone email address (docomo, AU, softbank, etc).
2. You also have to confirm a normal email address (hotmail, gmail, whatever).

If you don’t have both of these, you don’t get into Mixi, simple as that. I’ll still be happy to send folks invites, just know that you won’t be able to complete the registration process unless you have a Japanese cell phone. Read more…