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Japan’s Cell Phone Memory Restart event reunites users with old photos and past selves

Casey Baseel Sep 26, 2026
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A solution for when your trips down memory lane are blocked by a phone that won’t turn on or hold a charge.

Leave a battery in an empty state for too long, and it’ll eventually lose its ability to charge through conventional means. That’s the fate that’s befallen many flip phones, which were set aside when their owners transferred to smartphones. Unfortunately, having an unchargeable phone means that any old photos, texts, or other memories it contained are locked away…or they would be, were it not for a special program by KDDI, one of Japan’s major phone service providers.

Recently, KDDI held an event in Tokyo called Cell Phone Memory Restart (Omoide Keitai Saikido in Japanese). If you’ve got an old phone that won’t hold a charge, you can bring it and have KDDI use its special equipment to get it powered on again to help you preserve the memories inside. KDDI’s technicians are happy to restart cell phones from other carriers too, not just their own company’s.

Cell Phone Memory Restart is a periodic program with iterations all around Japan, and while there’s no fee for the service, reservations are required. Our Japanese-language reporter Natsuno Futon managed to secure a slot at the event held at KDDI’s Ginza 456 showroom in Tokyo’s Ginza neighborhood.

So on the day of her reservation, Natsuno grabbed her Toshiba Win-model flip phone, which she hasn’t used in roughly a decade, and went to revive it.

Honestly, Natsuno is still very fond of the way it looks. The standardized form and thin bezels of modern smartphones mean there’re only the most miniscule of differences between one device and another, but back in the day cell phone design was an extended expression of personal style.

Flicking it open for the first time in years, Natsuno was happy to learn that the hinges still work fine. On the other hand, more than one button’s plate had fallen off, and while she can still press on the pads underneath, the phone won’t turn on anymore.

Or, at least, it won’t turn on with the standard, consumer-grade charger it came with. As the KDDI staff member pulled the battery pack out of Natsuno’s phone, she explained, in laymen’s terms, what the issue is. “Essentially, your battery has forgotten that it’s a battery, so we’re going to give it a reminder,” the attendant told her.

Doing this requires a much more specialized apparatus than a regular old AC adapter, one that plugs directly into the battery pack.

After a few minutes of waiting, the staff told Natsuno that her phone was ready, and that they’d let her do the honors of turning it on.

With a sense of nervous excitement, Natsuno pressed and held down the power button…and sure enough, her phone came back to life!

As it went through its startup sequence, though, Natsuno had a new source of nervousness. Like we mentioned above, it’s been roughly 10 years since she used this phone, and she couldn’t remember what her wallpaper photo had been. What if it was something incredibly cringey, a foolish part of her younger life that was so necessary to leave behind that she subconsciously scrubbed it from her memory?

Thankfully, it didn’t turn out to be anything all that embarrassing.

Greeting Natsuno from inside her screen was professional baseball player Masahiro Araki of the Chunichi Dragons, who play their home games in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture. Natsuno grew up in the neighboring prefecture of Gifu, which has no pro baseball team of its own, making her one of her hometown’s many proximity-based Dragons fans. Though he’s now retired, Araki spent his entire 23-year career with the Dragons, and even the KDDI staff recognized him. Together with Natsuno they took a quick trip down memory lane, chatting about the team at the time and its last championship, plus the ensuing parade where Natsuno took the picture on her phone.

Things got even more nostalgic when Natsuno started looking through her phone’s photo album. There were photos of friends and family, of happy times (like the day she moved into her first apartment) and sad times (like the day her first car got into a fender-bender).

▼ There were also pictures of very happy days, like the one on which Natsuno ate this parfait.

Though the phone’s camera was considered high-quality at the time, it’s obviously been far surpassed by current technology. And yet, the lack of megapixels and automated color correction didn’t diminish the visual appeal of the photos that had been slumbering on Natsuno’s cell phone. If anything, the lack of megapixels and automated color correction made for an even more emotional connection with the broad-stroke sentimental mood of reminiscing about a moment from your past where you can’t recall all the details, but clearly remember the way you felt.

As part of the Cell Phone Memory Restart service, KDDI will also print out a large-size copy of one picture of your choice. Natsuno decided on a photo of herself that her dormitory roommate had taken of her during her freshman year of college. KDDI puts the image up on its projection wall so you can see the details clearly, and then they give you your printed copy (like the battery recharge, there’s no fee for this).

And while Natsuno is keeping these details to herself, having her phone powered on again also let her reread emails and text messages from back in the days when correspondence was stored on the device itself, not in a cloud network.

Ah, but aren’t you just going to have to say goodbye to all those photos and messages again once you get home from the event and your battery drains? Not necessarily. KDDI’s technicians say that following the Cell Phone Memory Restart’s procedure to revive the battery, it should once again be able to charge via an ordinary AC adapter. What’s more, if you no longer have an adaptor that works with your phone, at the Cell Phone Memory Restart they’ll give you one to keep, for free, provided they have stock available.

All in all, it’s a thoroughly satisfying, and incredibly generous, event. When she’d left the house, Natsuno had thought she was just going to be having a reunion with her old phone, but it turned out to be a way to visit with her past self too.

The next Cell Phone Memory Restart iterations at Ginza 456 are coming up on October 2-4 and November 6-8, and the complete list of events, as well as reservation request links, can be found here.

Related: Cell Phone Memory Restart
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[ Read in Japanese ]