And even if you get a rental in Japan with Softbank, so your 3G phone works (and keep in mind they refuse to service you if you want to get a smartphone on the network, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, iPhone, or otherwise), it's 1 yen for every 128 bytes. So 8 for 1KB, or 8192 yen for 1MB (about $87 now)

They instituted the ban ever since somebody thought they knew how to turn off data, and ruined it for the rest of us. Apparently that person managed to run up a bill in the thousands of dollars to Softbank.