TheTechMatterAnswer: Japan Travel & Internet survival guide

To communicate with your country from Japan there are essentially four methods:

- Use of a fixed or mobile phones owned by a Japanese: this method can be used only for emergencies because  typically the cost per minute of a call is usually huge, unless you live in a country with special agreements with Japan, but particularly it is at least very unpleasant to ask a Japanese to make you a favor like that. For emergencies, you may contact the embassy of your country whose position can be found in the Japanese Foreign Affairs website: http://www.mofa.go.jp/about/emb_cons/protocol/index.html

- Use prepaid phone cards (or coins) to be used in special public phones: calling cards are sold in the usual shops scattered throughout Japan  24 hours a day open. Phones that allow international calls are gray or green with a golden plaque in front. Most public phones only accept prepaid cards and coins. Yet even in this case the costs are generally very high and also the appliances are not very spread. You can find a guide here: http://gojapan.about.com/cs/livinginjapan/ht/ht_publicphone.htm

- Use a phone bought in your living country: This method is especially useful if you want to have some better safety in an emergency case if you, for example, hike isolated places. As for the other two methods of calls this is very expensive, but this factor depends on the contract you have with your operator. Indeed many operators provide additional calling plans to substantially cut costs when making calls to and from abroad. To use your cell phone is essential that you ensure:

• That there is an international roaming agreement between your country phone operator and one of the telephone companies of Japan (which you can see it on the website of your carrier in the section for abroad calls );

• That your phone supports mobile phone technology used in Japan: W-CDMA 2GHz or others( Find a complete guide here: http://euc.jp/misc/cellphones.en.html )

For example, the Nokia 6630 and Nokia 6220classic work perfectly. It is very likely that the next generation 3G phones will work, but I suggest you look at the specifications in the manufacturer website. If you need to buy a new one, get one with an integrated GPS receiver and the ability to run Java applications (like the 6220 classic), so you can also use it to orient yourself with the maps.

- Use Skype: This is the ideal method, because:

1) In almost every decent hotel there is the possibility to connect to the Internet using a portable computer that you brought from home via wired or wireless LAN.

2) If the hotel is a little bad, in general there is still a public computer with Skype installed for free access

3) The cost to call another computer with Skype is zero, even for calls with video, the cost to call landline phones around the world is extremely low and those for calling mobile phones around the world are comparable to those of a normal national telephone calling plan.

So, I suggest you buy a little prepaid Skype credit using PayPal before leaving. For my holiday, half of a minimum recharge amount (10 Euros) was enough for 16 days with frequent calls to fixed landlines and some mobile.