I'm liberating this one from the evil empire. The original poster recently saw this one at Nagoya, evidently one of the few-ish remaining ones in service. Their post title was:

Orange backlit LCD, check! Phone card slot, check! Japan in 1982 was the future! (An endangered species spotted at Nagoya station)

More examples & angles:
https://www.google.com/search?q=classic+green+NTT+public+payphone+from+Japan&udm=2

It’s still in service? I thought that was in a museum or a private collection. Wow, that just makes it even more special.

So it was claimed, yeah.

Actually, I've read that Japan is surprisingly outdated when it comes to various tech across a number of areas, almost like they see it as a tradition worth maintaining, I'm not quite sure.

I’ve heard the same about UK too. When other countries switched to electronic library cards, UK still kept the traditional paper system.

I heard this from a friend who studied there around 2005. Was a bit of a culture shock to go back in time like that. I expect they’ve upgraded their systems now.

It's very amusing as someone from the UK reading how Luddite you think us to be! I know my fridge is a hole in the ground kept cool with ice from the nearest glacier but...

I get it about libraries, assuming you're referring to filing systems, that'll probably be a funding thing. Only once the cost is low enough would it be worth updating the system. Particularly so if that's public sector libraries.

You reference 2005 though?! Only 21 years ago & you talk about being behind the times lol!!

Literally a cassette deck to an extent. Back in the day, you would buy phone cards and insert them into the front-loading slot. The display would track how many minutes you had left. It was so ubiquitous in the 1980s & 90s that you would get phone cards that had custom designs and your favorite J-Pop idols on them.

Japanese pay phone accept phone cards to this day.

Oh yeah, look at that. I hadn't even paid attention to that (major) detail. :S

I've seen specialised charge cards used in a number of cities in my country for various things, some niche, some very public, but didn't know that such was the case with payphones.

I imagine that such a card used for a TARDIS would be rather pricey. :P

They're still around. The color will tell you if it can do international or only domestic. They are particularly useful in disasters when cell towers are jammed (or just down after battery back-ups start failing after 24-96 hours depending).

I'm in Japan now and I ran into several of these ISDN phones. There is one at Sky Tree station too.
This one is from Akiba.

Just a fun little nugget I heard from someone who studied there at the time. I have no personal experience with UK libraries though.

So, any updates? When did the public libraries start having IT systems?

I had a hacked one that replenished itself 😋. Thinking back about it it was a bit cyberpunk (and not just phoning in the cold sweden with a bizarre card) IMO.

Are some of them pink?

https://www.ntt-east.co.jp/databook/history-public-phone-1971-1976.html

You can click on the various year ranges, but there have been a variety of types over the years. I don't recall having seen an actual working phone that wasn't green (or is it more yellow? I'm mildly colorblind) and grey.

I'm afraid I don't use them frequently enough to put a date to that, but I can recall around 2010 my local public library at the time being fully computerised as far as I could tell.

I expect there was a very staggered roll out, partially dependant on the county & their relation to the party in power, plus the north probably getting them later overall.

Contextless "meme" I have on my computer