What do foreigners who want to keep in touch with one another whilst in Japan as well as calling overseas do? I understand our aussie mobile phones will not work there? Would love to hear from you experienced aussies!

Are you talking about while on a trip?

aussies tend to hang out on the Australia board.

I am not Aussie but it doesn't matter, this is really a generic question. You can rent cell phones to use while you are in Japan. You can use them to call within Japan and to countries outside of Japan. All the phones, no matter the company, receive free incoming calls form anywhere in the world. I have used Vodaphone and Rentafone for rentals (and I also looked into PuPuRu). Vodaphone was a hassle because we had to spend time renting the phone once we got to Japan. With Rentafone you do it all online before the trip, and they will deliver the phones to your hotel in Japan and give you a nice simple sheet of calling instructions. With Rentafone you put the phone in a pre-paid envelope and mail it back to them the day you leave the country or the day you want to stop being charged.

All the rental phone companies post their rates for calls to different countries on their websites.

Thanks you nice people who posted replies, yes, angethereader, I meant while on a trip.

We are heading off to Hong Kong and mainland China this Friday. We have a prepaid vodafone mobile which we can set to roam in Hong Kong but cant in mainland China. We have arranged through Optus a Global Calling Card (no charge) which basically allows you make calls back to Australia (or anywhere) at normal rates and is billed to our home telephone account. It also allows us to set up a mailbox where family and friends can leave messages.

Jed, if kimmos had posted this on the Australia forum someone would have advised her/him to post on the applicable "destination" board - that's what usually happens and fair enough, too.

kimmos, I don't know Japan at all, but I'd assume that, as everywhere, the cheapest way to call home would be a phone card. The kind of thing you see on sale everywhere in Australia for varying amounts of prepaid credit ($10, $20, whatever) and offering very low call rates, a few cents a minute, to overseas destinations. You can use them from any phone; just call a local access number (usually printed on the back of the card) then follow the voice prompts. They should be bilingual (the first prompt I get using my Chi-Tel card, e.g., is "Press 2 for English&quot. You can get a global calling card from Telstra, Optus or whoever, but the rates as Mole says are "normal", meaning a good deal pricier than a prepaid phone card.

That doesn't help if you're part of a separated group whose members want to keep in touch with each other - obviously for that you need a mobile, so emd sounds like your expert there. Japan certainly doesn't use the standard international (except US/Canada) 900/1800 MHz GSM mobile technology, so you can't just buy a local SIM card for your existing mobile. Good luck.

Hi Jed,
Sorry for being ignorant but how do I get to the Australia board?

Yes, you guessed it, Neil Oz, we are travelling in a big group and mobile phones are such a blessing. How did we live before them?? Yeah, I guess the cheap phone cards like the ones we can get in Oz would be good to call overseas, if available. Emd's suggestion is great but as we are only there for a week, may not be worthwhile renting. So, in conclusion, I think we just have to be very regimental and arrange to meet at a certain spot and make no changes!

Neil - The reason I suggested the Australia board was that kimmos wrote, "Would love to hear from you experienced aussies!" Perhaps kimmos would get more advice if it were posted on both boards.

kimmos - There is a "change forum" drop-down menu from which you can choose various destination forums.

My understanding is that you can't use a Japanese phone card or any other kind of phone card in Japan unless you are using a phone that works in Japan. So Neil's statement that a phone card can be used in Japan on any phone is not quite accurate, if that is what he really meant to say.

I think Neil meant that a phone card works with any phone of the kind that's plugged in to the wall.

While a GSM mobile phone will not work in Japan, a 3G phone will. So if you're a subscriber to http://www.three.com.au/ you might be ok. Alternatively you can pull the SIM out of your GSM phone and stick it into an unlocked 3G phone and it'll work (if your service provider has a roaming agreement in Japan).

Someotherguy, is 3G the same as Tri(3)-Band? I got a tri bande phone (Eropean)last year, thinking finally I can use my phone in Japan. Wrong ! Even though my provider (Orange) 's site says roaming is possible (With Japanese Docomo), it did not work. Later I called the cutomer service of Orange and was told actually Japan is one of the few countries, however technologically advanced, that don't use the same phone system along with may be Korea (?) from the other parts of the world. He admitted, European tri-band phone can be used in most countries in the world (e.g. I can use mine in India by roaming) but japan is one of the few exceptions so he actually gave me as a solution, rent a phone in japan that I found too costly for my private use. This is about European Tri-Band phones but it was a disappointment for me. I don't know about Aussie phones. Perhaps are they are convertible to this particular Japanese system?

Yes, I meant that you can use a phone card from any landline, and if you have a functioning mobile, from that also. I did preface my comment with the disclaimer that I haven't visited Japan, but saw no reason why phonecards shouldn't operate there the same way they do in other countries. The cards I'm talking about are not to be confused with the SIM (subscriber identity module) card used in a GSM mobile phone.

Nor do they electronically store prepaid credits that can be used when you insert them into a payphone - I should have made that distinction too.

This too is general and not Japan-specific: if you're in a non-metro area and the access number you need to phone requires a long distance call, you will of course be paying domestic long distance rates in addition to the cheap international rate provided by the phone card.

kappa, Australia uses the same GSM phone system and same frequencies (900/1800) as the rest of the world, with the notable exceptions of the US, Canada and Japan (not sure about Korea). My tri-band GSM phone operates on those international 900 & 1800 megahertz (MHz) frequencies, plus the North American 1900 MHz band.

GSM, and its American countertpart CDMA, are 2nd generation (2G) technologies. 3rd generation (3G) networks offer higher bandwidth and so can be used for high-speed video and internet access. They're not compatible with 2G technology.

Life would be simpler if all countries committed to ITU (International Telecommunications Union) standards, but I suppose that's too much to hope for.

No, 3G has nothing to do with TriBand. 3G is otherwise known as UTMS and it's the next generation of GSM, but completely incomatible with the current GSM. (Regular GSM is a TDMA system, 3G is CDMA). Historically, Japan used a system that's competely incompatible with everybody else, now they're shifting to 3G, as is the rest of the world (with the exception of the USA).

Many European and Asian countries already have some 3G service, and most 3G phones are backward compatible with regular GSM (but usually only on the 900/1800 frequencies).