Communication

While in Japan, you will presumably want to be in touch with people wherever you came from. If not, this page might still be useful. It covers telephones and internet, but also details about electricity in Japan.

Time

When calling Japan, make sure that you get the time right. Japan has only one time zone at GMT+9 hours, so the time is the same in all cities. That is, take the time in the UK (not daylight saving time) and add nine hours. There is a useful clock showing the time in Japan here and a general conversion program here.

Remember that there may be a large time difference between your country and Japan. If you are calling, or someone will be calling you while you are here, you should be aware of the time differences unless you want to be woken at 3am by your mother.

Telephony

International telephone numbers (i.e. telephone numbers that are not in your own country) are made up of four parts:

International Direct Dialing Prefix + Country Code + Area/City Code + Telephone Number

• International Direct Dialing (IDD) prefix: will vary from country to country: check your phone book to see what it is for yours. It is normally 00 or 001 but varies if you live in a country where several companies provide international telephone services.
• Country code: Japan is 81.
• Area code: remove the zero from the area code when dialing to Japan (i.e. Tokyo (03) 5307 4030 becomes + 81 3 5307 4030 where + is the IDD prefix).
• Phone number: Your phone number.

When calling international numbers from Japan, the international access number depends on the company you use: 001 + country code for KDDI, 0041 + country code for Japan Telecom, 0061 + country code for Cable and Wireless are the most common. If you have a landline phone you can just use any one of these and they will automatically send you a bill. If you have a mobile phone, you will first have to make a contract with a company (you can do this when you get your mobile). Japan now have a "My Line" service, where you register with one of the providers of international telephone services and get large discounts (usually 50%) for calls abroad.

Mobile Phones

Virtually everyone has a mobile phone in Japan, and they are relatively cheap and easy to get. You can get either pre-paid phones, where you have a limited amount of credit on the phone and when it runs out, you can no longer make calls (but can receive them until an expiry date). The other type are contract-based, where you pay a monthly registration fee.

To get a mobile in Japan is easy and can be done very quickly. However, you can only get a contract-based phone if you have an alien registration card - so if you are coming on a tourist visa for a few months, you have no choice but the pre-paid type. To get a phone you will need your alien registration card, maybe your passport, and a credit card or bank book from a Japanese bank account. For the pre-paid phones, just some form of identification (passport is best). There are dozens of phone shops everywhere - rather than having to look for one, you will have trouble avoiding them. Many convenience stores also sell pre-paid mobile phones.

There are two types of mobiles: PHS and Cellphones ('keitai'). The PHS system is a little cheaper but coverage used to be less than the cellphone networks - nowadays both cover almost the whole of Japan except for some very rural areas. The main cellphone networks are NTT Docomo (the biggest), J-Phone, Au (pronounced as the letters 'A U') and Tu-ka (pronounced 'tsuu-ka'). Quality and coverage hardly vary, and all offer a wide range of plans and internet services. Choose whichever suits you, or what your friends have - most offer a free short mail service which only works between users of the same company's phones. If you use the email/free message service a lot, then a cellphone may turn out to be cheaper than a PHS.

Internet

You can easily connect your computer to the internet in Japan. There are a variety of methods.

• Payphones: you can plug into the many Internet-enabled ISDN payphones (the newer grey ones, not the old green phones) using a standard modem cable (US RJ-11) and sometimes standard LAN cable. You will need your own dialup ISP (Internet Service Provider).
• Mobile phones: You need an account with an ISP, and a special connector to your mobile. These connections are being replaced by the mobile cards (see below).
• Landline: A standard telephone line. Mostly you will see the standard US RJ-11 connector.
• Mobile internet cards: These are very handy gadgets. A standard I/O PC card (usually with a little aerial of one or two centimetres) that plugs into the card slot of your mobile and offers a fairly fast (usually 64kbps) connection. There is a monthly fixed charge plus the cost of the card (varies with the maker).

Some schools and most universities will offer internet access - check what this means (in one reported case at a language school, it meant one computer in a school office for staff use only although this will not be common and not the case with universities).