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Leaving for Japan in 2 days. Been researching the rental SIM card situation, and I’m disappointed to see it’s not really nailed like it is in Europe. That, and it’s way more expensive. Does anybody have any tips for this?
I have so far found the following services:
1. http://www.rentafonejapan.com/. You can rent phones (we have iPhones stocked with helpful apps and don’t want to rent a different phone). You can also rent a portable WIFI thing to use with your phone. I don’t really get this concept yet.
2. http://www.globaladvancedcomm.com/simrent.html. This seems like the cheaper of the sim rental options, and it supports iPhone 5. No telling how slow the data is.
3. http://www.softbank-rental.jp/e/rental-plan-ib03.php. This is what lo0ks like an absurdly expensive SIM rental service with a lot of potential for hidden charges to crop up later.
4. http://www.bmobile.ne.jp/english/14days.html. A middle of the road rental that seems reasonable deal, but the data is capped at 300kbps and there is NO VOICE service.
Any experience with this would be greatly appreciated. I go to London once a year and have a pay-as-you-go SIM I pop into the iPhone and it’s cheap cheap cheap.
The other option is use Verizon’s international rates you sign up for: 100MB/$25. I expect we will use data most of the time, and voice maybe a few times. I can’t imagine Verizon will beat any of the Japanese offerings, but most of their terms are so awful that they just might. At least I don’t need to sign up for something new.
Yeah, I was advised when I went over almost three years ago that Japan doesn’t really do SIM rental. We got an international travel SIM before we left home.
Thanks for the suggestion—I didn’t know about those. After a cursory glance, they seem to be decently priced for calls but bad on data prices, hovering between .49 ~ 3.50 / MB. I think we’ve determined we will use more data than voice on this trip, especially with our Japanese friend using KakaoTalk, which has a VoIP feature.
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