Cheap Mobile or SIM Rental
 

Staying in Tokyo for 4 days 3 nights. Checked out rentaphone which is abit high for such a short stay. Any cheaper options? Will airport rental phones be cheaper on a per day basis?

It is impossible for you to do cheap mobile (or buy prepaid card) in japan, they need your address proof and an alien card registration and so on.

Rent a SIM is your best option. If you inbound on ANA you can take free rental offer

https://opr.inphonix.co.jp/mediadocs...mestic/pricing

Unfortunately flying with SQ so no free option for me.

I have rented a NTT DoCoMo SIM card from Telecom Square. The rental tariff is 105 yen per day plus about 100 yen per minute of calls placed. The tariff table also shows 100 yen per SMS sent and 1 yen per 128 byte data packet, but I did not incur any of those charges. They have kiosks all over Narita Airport.

Softbank Mobile's rental SIM card offering is more or less the same.

I've used JAL ABC (http://www.jalabc.com/rental/domestic_eng/index.html) which have kiosks at Narita, Kansai, Nagoya, and Haneda airports. If you only need a Japan domestic cell phone, the cost is 250 yen/day + 80 yen/minute for call placed (receiving call is free). You can also pre-order so you'll know the cellphone number ahead of time.

Will be arriving in HND and given late arrival want to just go to hotel. Thus will want to buy a SIM card in the city (since I found out my Tmobile SIM pre-pay won't work).

Any tips on places in the city that is legit (cost really isn't a huge issue).

It's still virtually impossible as a foreigner to buy a SIM card. The advice about renting at the airport is still your best bet.

Short term visitors cannot legally activate a voice line. So there is nowhere you can by a SIM card for voice service.

You can have rental SIM cards sent to your hotel, on a specific day within a 3 hours window.

Another rental place is globaladvancedcomm

Ack, given how much of a hassle this is I think I'll just use my China SIM card for now and pay higher rates til when I get a new US phone that isn't prepaid...

Thanks

Yeah, I think there are two countries where this is impossible: North Korea and Japan.

Is this a "government" requirement or just a typically ornery policy established by the mobile phone companies?

When you get a contract then their hang-up with alien registration is that they are afraid you are going to run away and not pay your bills. It took about a month to get Softbank to give us the phone. KDDI (AU) were actually easy and offered it to us without any problems, but we were not keen to get a non-UMTS phone and Softbank's plans were better and the Iphone "free". Didn't even try Docomo.

If you are a bit persistent and aggressive you can get things done. I finally managed to get an supplementary CC from Citibank last week. It's ridiculous: they won't allow a primary account holder to give someone else a CC without alien reg card, etc. In the States you can give a supplementary CC to the pizza delivery guy if you trust him.

Don't forget South Korea. Its policies are almost mirror of Japan's, despite how much the two countries dislike each other.

The governments say it is to track the caller in case criminal activities are conducted over mobile calls, but they have the side benefit of bringing in profit for the carriers. Visitors have to either roam or rent phones/SIM cards.

Higher? Msb0b said Telecom Square's rental SIMs are 100yen/minute. Conversely, China Mobile and China Unicom both charge around 2RMB/minute for roaming to Japan. Given the current rate of roughly 8RMB/95yen, roaming from China is cheaper than a local rental SIM. SMS at 100 yen a pop? Both the Chinese providers only charge you 1RMB. That's less than 20 yen each! And you don't have to worry about deposits or pay the daily rental tariff either.

Yes, they charge for incoming calls when roaming. But at about 25% of rental prices, you have to take a lot of incoming calls for a rental to be worthwhile. In other words, if you've got no reason to have a local number, by all means use your China SIM. That's what I'll be doing this October break.

And I'd recommend it for any other visitors too- if you've got a capable phone and a Chinese SIM, go ahead and use it in Japan. This is one case where roaming is cheaper than a local card.

BTW - if you need data while you're in Japan, I can recommend these guys:

http://www.globaladvancedcomm.com/

I used it with my iPhone in order not to incur massive roaming charges, and although battery life is only 4 hours or so, it was way better than nothing, especially for navigating when out and about.

Your T-Mobile and AT&T phones WILL work in Japan & South Korea as long as it has the international outside of Americas (Europe/Asia/rest of the world) Americas UMTS 2100...

Basically GSM 3G. They have NO GSM 2G.

I'm 99% sure both phones as long as they support 3G will work in Japan...

Them selling you a SIM card is another matter...

Don't geted raped on roaming charges.

AND Verizon/Sprint have CDMA2000 1X voice & data roaming in Japan now, actually any Verizon/Sprint now works in Japan being raped of charges:

Update your domestic VZW/Sprint PRL in the States (*228, option 2) and it will be ready to work in Japan and a quick VZW CSR call to tell them to enable international roaming on your device/eligilibility (approved in 99% of cases).

http://b2b.vzw.com/international/tra...fic/Japan.html

Verizon phone *turns on* in Japan.
Verizon phone roams onto Japanese KDDI CDMA2000 1X SID.
You get hit with $1.99/minute roaming charges and 1X data roaming charges even though it costs cheap as molasses because KDDI America runs a global network.

This post is a compilation of posts I made on another forum regarding my own research on sim rental for a trip I took this past August. My phone is a T-Mobile G2 (US) with Android OS. (Apologies in advance for the language)

I found 3 options:

http://www.softbank-rental.jp/en/phones/sim3g.php

Here are a couple of other options:

http://www.globaladvancedcomm.com/simrent.html

http://www.jcrcorp.com/mobile/mobile_rental_simcard.htm

Both are third parties and both provide pickup at NRT.

I am going in August and I have the same dilemma. I would otherwise go with Softbank as they are a primary provider but the "pay as you go" data charges kind of scare me. I've never really gauged my data usage.

Preliminarily, the Global for Android (me) looks best.

Trying to figure it out:

I dunno, it's just so hard to decipher which is the "best" deal. Here's how I see it, using US$'s and Android phone and a one week time frame.

SB: Cheap rental rates, but variable phone AND variable data charges. Highest voice rate @ ¥105/ minute. Conclusion: too many unknowns.

Global: US$150 (¥12,000) for variable phone plus unlimited data. Cheapest voice @ ¥24 / minute in Japan. Conclusion: Preliminarily, the one I'm going with.

JCR: US$165 for variable phone plus unlimited data. Middling voice rate @ US0.90 (¥72). Conclusion: Nothing special.

I'm comparing all of this against my f*****g hotel, who wants to charge me ¥1000 per day for wifi. I figure if I drop ¥6,000 on that, I might as well get phone service.

I mean, I just got back from Hong Kong and it cost me all of US$15.00 TOTAL for a prepaid voice and data card that lasted ALL WEEK! When is Japan going to get the f**k with it on this? I see a $150 expenditure that should be $15.

Compared to my roaming charges:

Update: My roaming charges IN JAPAN (T-mobile "WorldClass® International Roaming" in the US):

Voice: $2.29 / ¥185 per minute

Data: $15.00 / ¥1,200 per MB

These rate seem usurious and must be geared towards either the who-gives-a-f*** business traveler or the most lazy or timid, no-game tourist on the planet.

Again, I've never figured out my data usage but I can see downloading like one map in google maps probably being equal to a meg.

In Japan:

Update: I. Am IN JAPAN right now, using a rental sim from "Global Communications" (option 2 in my post above). They use a signal from Docomo and the strength and speed have been fantastic. I've only done minimal voice so I am very interested to see the final bill.

Further update when it arrives.

Back from Japan:

Ok, my final update: My bill came in for one week's rental of a Global Advanced Communications voice and data sim. I am happy to report that they did not charge me ONE yen more than the contract rate (12,000 ¥ for one week, with 1,000 ¥ of that amount being credited towards voice). I suppose this is because I used it primarily for data (which is unlimited) and only sporadically used it for voice. As I stated above, it performed flawlessly.

A final note (if anybody cares): The package was an example of true Japanese "efficiency": a padded envelope contained a large plastic case the size of a cd holder, the instructions and a prepaid return envelope. Inside the larger case was a smaller, padded plastic case that contained the sim card. After I was finished I was to repackage everything back into the prepaid envelope and drop off at the post office. I mean, jeezis, just give me the f*****g sim card like every other developing Asian country has been doing for the last 10 years!