As a reasonable follow up to my last article about me realizing I’m a bit of a phone phreak living in the wrong time period, I thought it’d be cool to upload this little snippet of audio I recorded.
In this case we have a 1-800 number that, when dialed, gives you the Japanese “this call cannot be completed as dialed” message. Yes, a number that’s in the United States (or at least in the NANP) which, for whatever reason, is Japanese. It even has the proper reorder tone!
It’s one of my favorite oddities you can find on the web on a few phone number lists. It’s unique, to say the least, and certainly not something you’d normally hear dialing a normal number here in the states.
Of side note, the picture used in the video, and as the photo for this article, if of an actual Japanese phone I own. I should do a video on it sometime, but I’m missing the power supply. Ah well!
It should be noted this is captured via a basic “telephone pickup” device which I found today in storage at work – it attaches to the phone handset via a suction cup and records the sound. It’s weak, and noisy, but I left the audio unedited as that ruins the nature of the recording which, quite honestly, for one made today, sounds just like it was done 40 years ago.
That’s pretty cool, and I plan to do more entries like this going forward, to document what I can of the phone network as it exists today.