Join Date: May 2000
Location: Houston, TX, USA
Programs: UA 1K, AA Lifetime Platinum, DL Platinum, Honors Diamond, Bonvoy Titanium, Hertz Platinum
Posts: 7,973
Given that you've ruled out Skype, here are two suggestions:
1. Get an AT&T Prepaid Calling Card from Wal-Mart. It's priced in terms of $0.05/minute for US domestic calls, but can be used for int'l at higher rates. It costs something like $0.35/minute to call from Japan to the US. Charge it up with enough value to handle your expected usage prior to departure, and get the Japan local access numbers from the AT&T website.
2. Just call from your hotel room. It's been my experience that IDDD from hotels in Japan is NOT the ripoff that *any* long distance typically is from a hotel in the US. It might even be cheaper than the Wal-Mart card. Those of us based in the US are so conditioned to NEVER use the hotel guest room phone for long distance that it often doesn't even occur to us to check what the rates are in other countries.
Keep in mind that with both of the above, you may not be able to access toll-free numbers in the US, so make sure that you have a non-toll-free phone number for your conference bridge.