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Lost in the Translation

I-mode is a huge hit in Japan. Now the big question: Will it travel well?

Three weeks after buying his latest mobile phone, Nick Emmerson, a 30-year-old British lawyer based in Tokyo, still finds his new toy "amazing." It weighs only about three ounces, but it has a color screen and a continuous wireless connection to the Internet, and it even vibrates when his e-mail arrives.

Mr. Emmerson's new phone hooks up to Japanese mobile-phone giant NTT DoCoMo Inc.'s popular i-mode service, through which he can visit thousands of specially adapted Web sites. Since it was introduced in February 1999,...