Benjamin Kowarsch wrote:
>
>
> The only problem with that is that in practise you "need" an alien
> registration card (gaikokujin tourokusho) in order to get a prepaid
> phone in Japan. With the help of Japanese hosts and a lot of hassle some
> people I know have been able to get one with a passport only, but that
> appears to be the exception.
This is incorrect.... I have been able to buy several pre-pay for
friends with little more than a Japanese issued international
driver's license... and it was expired at the time! You might find
keitai shops that are more anal than others... or you might find
that most keitai shops are driven by new sales and couldn't
give a rats ass about the "rules". Beware capitalism and freedom
at work...
> You only have to watch Japanese news when another kidnapping or remote
> fraud case makes headlines. The use of a prepaid mobile by criminals is
> *always* heavily emphasised, which probably has further contributed to a
> bad public image of prepaid and it makes you wonder if you are being
> sized up as a potential criminal when you ask for a prepaid phone and
> the clerk doesn't really seem to like the idea of selling one to a
> gaijin.
In every part of the world, the powers that be *hate* pre-pays.
To that degree, pre-pays are the tool of the freedom loving,
privacy protecting, rebel patriot everywhere.
The police NZ are trying to get their very liberal pre-pay access
policies changed. The strawman used by the NZ police is bomb
threats. As it is, I you can walk into a Dick Smiths or Harvey
Norman and pickup a pre-pay with cash over the counter. No
registration... just slip in the SIM and start dialing. Use SMS and
the man can't even use voice recognition to track you (of course
it's almost impossible to have your bomb threats taken seriously
when SMSed).
Australia requires that you register your phone initially, using either
your passport, national id or driver's license number. Of course,
there's no cross checking of the database entries for validity, so
a made up passport number will keep your phone working
indefinitely (or maybe the man is just silently tracking the potential
rebels... use a passport number gleaned from a goole search if
you're really paranoid).
At any rate, you can always pickup a working, registered pre-pay
on the second hand market in *any* country... that's what's
wonderful about capitalism and freedom... they're unstoppable
no matter how brain dead the government they flurish under.
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Received on Wed Oct 31 01:50:58 2001