A phone strap, cell phone strap, or mobile phone strap, was originally a string or loop to help the user hold their cell phone, which was invented and became popular in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 where they are known as in Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

. Phone straps have now become a cultural phenomenon

Phenomenon

A phenomenon , plural phenomena, is any observable occurrence. Phenomena are often, but not always, understood as 'appearances' or 'experiences'...

 beyond their basic utilities, and they may be decorated or themed with famous characters such as animation

Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

 heroes or Hello Kitty

Hello Kitty

is a fictional character produced by the Japanese company Sanrio, first designed by Yuko Shimizu. She is portrayed as a female white Japanese bobtail cat with a red bow. The character's first appearance on an item, a vinyl coin purse, was introduced in Japan in 1974 and brought to the United States...

. Phone straps may also have additions to add additional functions such as detecting ghosts, carrying medicine pills or mobile gardening.

See also

• Mobile phone charm
• Mobile phone chains
• Key chain