Email writing class for fathers

Sometimes Japanese TV is more interesting than it intended to be. One of the endless talkshows arranged an email writing class for fathers, thus proving two things: Anything can become entertainment, and it is never to late to teach old dogs new tricks.
The people who walked into the class (actual people, in an area in central Tokyo, it looked like) were typical Japanese salarymen in their 50-60's. You would expect them to be completely clueless, and it is no wonder they didn't get the visual slang of the 18-year olds who were the panel (and they would probably have problems reading the emails of 14-year-olds).
But they were all using email to communicate. You would be hard pressed to find a 50-year-old guy in Europe who is sending emails to his wife to ask if he is to pick up something on the way home. And they were all using it on their mobile phones.
Seeing that it is 10 years next year since the launch of iMode, and 10 years ago since WAP launched this year (is anyone going to celebrate that?) it is interesting that the mobile web has not yet taken off for real outside Japan, but that it still is the big thing here. People are getting new mobiles all the time (the 60-year-olds had to have upgraded at least twice in the past 10 years to be able even to communicate with their daughters). Which means aproximately 3.5 years per phone. Kids of course upgrade even more often.
These guys are probably not very sensitive to fashion (to judge from their suits), so fashion is no incentive to them to upgrade their mobile phones. The reason they did was that they could get more, and better, services (or else, that someone bought the phone for them). But the services are driving the terminals, not the other way around. You will find Nokia claim the reverse sometimes, and there is a feedback loop. But if Japanese salarymen could learn to write emails to their daughters in 10 years, 
there is no reason to expect Americans to do worse. The questions is what the incentive is. American families are notorious for their lack of communication, after all.