On 2008-04-24, Harold Heringhi <harold_heringhi@msn.com> wrote:
> A friend will be traveling south of Osaka in Japan soon.
> She in a California Verizon customer with a Samsung phone.
> What are her options in Japan?
> Is renting a cell phone at the Osaka airport and returning it in two weeks a
> good idea?

That's often the best option for Japan if she has no one there
who can loan her a phone, but it isn't cheap. I've looked at renting
a Softbank SIM, web page here

http://www.softbank-rental.jp/en/

and, while incoming calls are free with the rental SIM, outgoing
calls even to numbers in Japan are almost $1/minute with calls
to the US at nearly $2/minute.

I have a Celtrek SIM, from

http://www.celtrek.com

which roams in Japan at prices which aren't so bad if most of the
calls are to or from the US (the SIM has a US number, incoming calls
in Japan are 24 cents/minute and calls to the US 34 cents/minute), but
this still leaves the problem of the phone. In Japan you need a
3G UMTS phone which supports the European 3G band, and these are
nearly unavailable in the US. Softbank will rent you a phone to put
the SIM in, but 2 weeks at $9/day adds up to more than I paid for
my first 3G phone in Hong Kong.

If she does decide to rent the Japan phone service she might take
a look at Rebtel, here

http://www.rebtel.com

for making and receiving calls from home. She can call US contacts by
dialing Japan landline numbers ($1/minute rather than $2) and then get
them to call her back on the US number the call appears to them to come
from. The incoming call will be free of charge on the Japan phone, and
Rebtel's charge of 15 cents per minute for the call isn't bad.

Dennis Ferguson