Well, it's clear jib71 thinks I fall into Category "e". Apparently Japan is a special case and I'm an idiot. But in my defense, I was only trying to be helpful.

I have traveled worldwide, including Japan. However, I didn't have my current AT&T quad band phone 3 years ago when I went to Japan. I rented a phone that time.

In attempting to answer the OP, I was going by my experiences with using an AT&T quad band phone in at least 10 other countries, as well as information provided on the AT&T web site. I was honestly under the impression that the whole point of paying the big bucks for a quad band phone was its usefulness in world travel. Sorry my info was incorrect.

It's actually good that I learned this, since I'll be visiting Japan again in a few months.