Ride a Tokyo subway and you are almost guaranteed to see two groups of people

Those who are sleeping -- not just casual nappers, but folks who are full-on, deep-REM-cycle, drool-down-the-chin asleep.

The other group comprises people staring blankly or furiously punching the keys of clamshell phones with giant screens.

So it shouldn't come as much surprise that a survey by research group comScore's MobiLens service finds that the Japanese are the 'most connected' mobile-phone users in the world. Three of every four Japanese use their phones to either browse the Web, access applications or download content to their handsets. This compares to 44% in the United States and 39% in Europe.

Dig into the survey and some interesting trends emerge. Only 40% of Japanese send text messages, while two-thirds of Americans and 82% of Europeans engage in short message service, or SMS. Why is this?

The Japanese just prefer to send emails, a function that mobile Internet services like NTT DoCoMo Inc.'s i-mode servicehas enabled that for years. While the proliferation of smartphones has made sending emails on the go more common in the U.S. and Europe, the usage figures still trail that of Japan. The report says 54% of Japanese send emails from their phones, compared with 28% of Americans and 19% of Europeans.

One of the unique features offered in Japanese cellphones -- sometimes lampooned as 'Galapagos' models because the technological innovations are specifically tailored to suit Japanese consumers' needs and haven't been adapted for wider use outside of Japan -- is putting Japan ahead of the game in terms of watching video on their phones. Many Japanese watch television on 1seg, a mobile terrestrial digital-audio and video-data broadcasting service. The report said 22% of Japanese watch TV or video on their phones, as opposed to 5% of Americans and Europeans.