So after a longggg few weeks of not having a phone, and all of the associated problems of not being able to contact people whilst out, and running up a high bill on my English mobile, I finally went out last week to get one!
I met Shunyo at Musashi-Sakai station to go and have a look around the mobile phone shops in the area. Instead of just going to a network branch, we went into a shop that sold phones from all of the different networks; sort of like a Phones 4U or Carphone Warehouse place. The cheapest deal was on Docomo, whereby I got a two-year contract, and a free phone. What most people seemed to get was the pre-paid option from Softbank, but despite the 9,000 contract cancellation fee, it actually worked out cheaper altogether to get the two-year Docomo contract. I pay 1100 yen a month (under a tenner), which gets me unlimited emails. The Japanese use emails a lot more than texts, as they're much cheaper! Another advantage is the fact that you can email computers from your phone, as well. I know this is a usual features in smartphones anyway, but my new phone isn't a smartphone, just a basic one. I don't get free texts or minutes with this contract, but that doesn't bother me as I only really intend to use the email.
I got a free handset with my contract. It's not too bad, though! It has a 5.1 megapixel camera and an electronic Japanese-English dictionary, among other things.
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| A warning screen I don't understand |
So I'm glad I can now finally keep in touch with other people in Japan! It was a bit of a fuss actually trying to buy it. It's not like at home where you can walk into any Argos and pick up a pay-and-go SIM card for £1. For a start, you have to be 20 here to get a phone. Ridiculous I know, but after getting Mum to fax over the photo and address page of her passport to prove she gave her consent for me to have one, I could start on the paperwork, which I won't even begin to go into, as it was hugely boring and typically Japanese in it's pointless bureaucracy.
So yes, if you're yet to get a phone, I recommend you go into a shop where you can compare deals from different networks, as they're generally less biased, and have a good range of recommendations for different deals, depending on what you're after. They're also often willing to jump on the computer to research anything they're not 100% sure about, which just seemed to be my annoyingly precise questions about data charges and roaming, so fair play to them.
So yes, if you're yet to get a phone, I recommend you go into a shop where you can compare deals from different networks, as they're generally less biased, and have a good range of recommendations for different deals, depending on what you're after. They're also often willing to jump on the computer to research anything they're not 100% sure about, which just seemed to be my annoyingly precise questions about data charges and roaming, so fair play to them.
That's all to talk of on the mobile front, but I've decided on another feature of my blog; I'm going to have a 'photo of the day' at the end of each post. There is so much strange stuff here in Japan (as I'm sure you can all imagine) so I thought I'd photograph anything hilarious I see and stick it on here :) I'll annotate them to try and give a bit of context, too.
Although, I haven't seen anything funny today, besides the picture below, which I found on the internet. But after this post they will all be photos taken by me in Japan!
James
Photo of the Day
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| I don't think this needs a caption. |
