heya all,
in regards to renting versus buying a mobile phone while in japan...
when i was in japan last april i just went to a local TU-KA shop in
shibuya and sat down and using my broken japanese language skills
bought a $30 me-tool clear from TU-KA. i got a 500yen prepaid card with
the phone free and bought and extra 3000yen prepaid phone card.
the phone came with an english manual and instructions on how to
activate the prepaid phone cards for my minutes... i then went down to
the local family mart and bought an international prepaid phone card,
so with both my prepaid cards in hand i was able to make local and long
distance (to the US!) calls in my hand. my phone stored email addresses
for sms, and phone numbers as well. very cool.
the TU-KA phone i bought had a whole slew of other really cool features
that i did not have the language skills/kanji recognition to use. oh
yeah, my minutes just expired last month, as was mentioned in one of
the earlier threads, your prepaid minutes are valid for up to a year
after purchase. the next time i go back to japan, i 'should' be able to
use my phone if i buy more prepaid phone cards/minutes.
good luck, my vote is to buy a phone and save it for later use (or just
as a japanese souvenir)
cheers,
jason.
jason fields
jason@air-port.com
415.823.5353 mobile
415.642.2808 studio
Received on Sat Sep 28 07:09:09 2002