Buying a Cell Phone

I decided that it would be best if I actually bought a cell phone for my one year stay in Japan.

My question is, is it possible to buy a phone and have the bill charged to America? Since I probably can't purchase it myself (I have a student visa) can my host family help me with that without actually being billed/charged? The thing is, I will be changing host families after a few months, so I wouldn't want them stuck with a bill.

I will probably be texting a lot, and calling other Japanese phones. I'll use a phonecard to call the US.

With that, how much would a basic plan be monthly?

is it possible to buy a phone and have the bill charged to America?

Phone bills can be paid:
- by cash at convenience stores
- by bank transfer (it is easy to set up a bank account in Japan)
- possibly by credit card

Since I probably can't purchase it myself (I have a student visa)

It is possible to get a phone on a student visa!

With that, how much would a basic plan be monthly?

The cheapest plans start around 3000 Yen per month.

Yes you can get a phone with a student visa.

Some companies if I recall such as AU have special student service plans, but I'm sure other companies will as well, have your host family go phone shopping with you for further assistance.

Is it true that I will need an Alient Registration card to subscribe as well?
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2223.html

Since I will be buying a phone and service in Japan, I need to choose a phone model.

First...
I've been to Japan before, but have never seen a cell phone store. Do cell phone carriers have their own stores?

Which carriers would allow me, as an 18 y.o. foreigner, to purchase a phone, use monthly payment plans, allow me to text unlimitedly (or frequently) and have a generous amount of minutes?

Which popular phone models would allow me to do all of the above?

I will be in Japan next month, so I would like to decide on which phone now. I know that upon entering the store I'd probably have a hard time reading the features and differences of each phone... so it would be wise to check in advance in order to avoid me ending up purchasing a useless phone.

I know the last question is quite a stretch, but once I'm given carrier names I will try to research their phones.

...you can just go to Google and type in any of the Japanese phones like AU, DoCoMo, Softbank, etc and go to their website - they all have english websites with descriptions of their Japanese phone models.

I have actually been looking into this for about a month now, many of the sites do not list specific model information in English. Aside from that, some of the billing pages are awfully confusing...

At the moment I am actually searching through some of the pages and plan to post some links.

(Also, sorry for the last question being so vague, I'm going to post links to models I find attractive so I can get a steady translation.)

Niko,

Is it true that I will need an Alient Registration card to subscribe as well?

Yes. But unless you are just here sightseeing, you will need to get an Alien Registration Card anyway.

First...
I've been to Japan before, but have never seen a cell phone store. Do cell phone carriers have their own stores?

Yes, they do. They are everywhere! But I recommend shopping around, as I think the discount electrical stores tend to offer better deals and let you look at all the different carriers' models side by side.

Which carriers would allow me, as an 18 y.o. foreigner, to purchase a phone, use monthly payment plans, allow me to text unlimitedly (or frequently) and have a generous amount of minutes?

All of them.

Which popular phone models would allow me to do all of the above?

Any of them. The model you choose doesn't determine the payment plan.

I know the last question is quite a stretch, but once I'm given carrier names I will try to research their phones.

You will want to compare Docomo, au, and Softbank. You can find details of their phones and payment plans on the web.
When choosing a phone, aside from basic things like style and colour, you need to decide whether you want a phone with "osaifu keitai" functions (for Mobile Suica etc), MP3 player features, or one-seg TV, etc.

The only services I need are phone calls to Japanese phones, texting, and picture-taking. I notice that most of the phones are stuffed full of other features...

Do Japanese carriers have unlimited call plans like here in the US? With Verizon I talk for hours and hours a week and always get a $30 Bill.

DOCOMO

Billing Plan:
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/charge/bill_plan/plan/index.html

Now, these plans look expensive.. Is the full price only the Basic Monthly charge or that plus the Communications allowance? It isn't very clear.. So lets say I wanted to use Type L, does that mean I'd be paying $100 a month to talk for only 4 1/2 hours for a whole month?

Phones:
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/product/foma/904i/sh904i/index.html

http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/product/foma/704i/sh704i/index.html

http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/product/foma/904i/f904i/index.html

Those are some of the Docomo phones that I would like. (But basically any flip-phone would do) I don't see any of the prices here.. What would these types of phones generally cost?

I will make a new post for other carriers, I would hate to bombard you guys with so many questions at once.

Niko,

The Docomo models you posted links to are all the very latest models, so you should expect to pay anything up to 30,000 yen for one. I think it is still the case that slightly older models can be had for anything from 1 yen upward.
And as I posted earlier, you need to decide what features you want rather than just blindly selecting models from the Docomo website. If you don't want TV, then there is no point buying a phone with the added bulk (and cost) a TV adds.

What I would do is browse around in person when you are there, Also some carriers as I mentioned before have student discounts since you'll be there on a student visa, that may or may not be published on their websites.

You don't need the latest and greatest models listed to do things such as make a phone call or text messaging.

I would prefer a phone costing $100 or less.
Yes, I'd definately want a phone that doesn't have all of those features and only has the basics that I've listed, right now I'm looking at AU's site, which does have the info in English (So I can check most of it myself).

But I've decided instead of focusing on phones I should decide on a billing plan first, to make this less of a hassle and more convenient for everyone.

All of the websites use terms that I don't understand when describing the plans, which is pulling me into deeper confusion. (packets, MOVA, FOMA, packet communications, imode, C-mail, etc..)

This is KDDI's plan page:
http://www.au.kddi.com/english/charge_discount/index.html

After clicking on either of the CDMA links, there is a payment page. Just like DOCOMO's, I do not understand some of it. Besides that I went to AU's Student Discount page, I may be elgible for a discount so if I go with AU I will try and see if I am.

CDMA
http://www.au.kddi.com/english/charge_discount/plan/win/index.html
Okay, I think I am starting to understand this. With Plan M, I pay at ONLY ��6,930 a month if I don't go over 144 minutes. If I do, I'd have to pay ��14 per 30 secs? I think thats how this plan runs. Unfortunately theres no info on texting..but is everything else right?

Most of these sites don't display the really old models, and if the stores are like American stores, they will only carry particular older models. I will take Johns advice and decide upon a model once I'm in the store.
All I have to do is to learn how to say phrases asking if the phone has particular features, no problem. =]

Everyone can ignore my posts regarding phone models.

The phrase "price transparency" appears not to have been incorporated into the Japanese language yet.

When I sorted out a cellphone recently, I only wanted a basic model so I can make a few calls to friends.

At the shop there were endless extra services the sales guy wanted to add, it took forever to say no to them all."Do you use internet?", "Yes", (tick box), "..but I don't want to pay to use it from my phone", etc etc ad nauseum. It was a real hassle to go through this overly complicated formula that determined the final price. I must have spent more than half an hour just asking what the various mandatory charges were. I had to pay extra to get the itemised billing for the first 2 months because they can't set up the bank transfer in that time and it's the only way to know how much I owe! (According to the salesman).

Also, I had to defer payment for two months ("free") but then I was locked into a 2 month longer contract.

In the end they said they needed my passport for me to sign the contract even though I had my gaijin card. So I went back to the shop later with my passport and it took them an hour to prepare the contract (I think 20 minutes was typing in my name in romaji).

Maybe I just had a bad experience. Is this the usual Japanese way ? I know it's normal here to have to pay lots of little charges when using services. I'm from the UK and this level of price opaqueness feels like "sharp practice" to me.

I took a friend who was fluent in Japanese to assist me. I think you will also need some help, learning a few phrases won't be enough.

My advice would be to go prepay. If you're only here 1 year and want to keep the cost down then you don't want to pay for a contract phone which you can't use in any other country when you leave.

(packets, MOVA, FOMA, packet communications, imode, C-mail, etc..)

FOMA is DoCoMo's variant of 3G.
MOVA is what DoCoMo calls it's 2G service (not GSM).

imode is like WAP, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-mode

Each provider has their own name for email from the phone, which can include attaching photos. The same as SMS/MMS.

Packet/packet communication usually means data: web pages

Back to the top, if you're staying with a host family, i'm more than sure that the host family would be happy to go out with you and assist you with shopping for a telephone and handeling any translation issues that might arise.

To nico-chan:

The 6,930 for Plan M is the base rate, which does not take the applicable discounts into account.

If you look at the discount services page that lists all the potential (monthly) discounts:
http://www.au.kddi.com/english/charge_discount/discount/index.html

The discount that applies to everybody is the so-called My Plan.
http://www.au.kddi.com/english/charge_discount/discount/personal_discount/index.html

which takes off 36.5% of your monthly bill, but requires a 2-year contract with a 9,975 early-termination fee.

I think you mentioned that you will be a student during your one-year stay in Japan.

If that's the case, you qualify for the Student Discount
http://www.au.kddi.com/english/charge_discount/discount/student/index.html

gives you 50% off your monthly bill and has a one-year contract with a 3,150--an all-around better deal. It cannot be used in combination with My Plan.

There are other plans/discounts that may be applied to your monthly bill.

You can see that you don't really get as many free minutes as you do in say, the U.S. for about the same amount of money. Going over will of course incur call charges.

Packets are basically bandwidth (internet usage) charges you incur when you use internet services with you phone. That includes send e-mail(au's C Mail service), surfing the net, download ringtones and games, etc. The basic (elective?) charge for the EZ WIN plan is
300, and you get charge per "packet," or you can sign up for any of the fixed-rate packet discount plans. It costs .2 per email. The good (or bad, it depends) thing about it is that your "free minutes" allowance can apply to your packet charges as well. So you run less of a risk of going over on packets if you use the internet services more than you call.

Be careful, though--using the internet with your cellphone can be very addictive. Sky-high packet charges may result.


So you have:

Base rate - applicable discount + EZ WIN charge (elective?) + packet plan charge (elective) + call & packet overage charges + misc. fees (surcharges, etc)

And that, is but the tip of the iceberg...

Hmm, since most of the people have been posting about AU/Docomo (which I don't have a clue about), I thought I would just mention about Softbank a bit.

I'm currently here in Japan on a non-visitor visa for a year, and after talking with friends ended up buying a Softbank phone. Now there might be something that I'm missing regarding fees or whatnot, but it comes out quite cheap in comparison with most of what I heard AU/Docomo providing.

With the Softbank White Plan, I pay 980yen monthly base for my calling - free calls 1am-9pm (softbank only though), slight charge for AU/Docomo. Added a subcharge of approx. 400 yen, and it gave me unlimited texting. For my case, with most of my friends getting Softbank, it made sense. Don't know if that will help you any.

Good luck buying a phone! Lots of nice looking models to choose from here.

Oh yeah, unlimited calling within the network--the White Plan. I hear it's really popular.

JP - Thank you, that information is very helpful! Do you know the name of the extention that gave you unlimited texting? The ones I see on Softbank's page list only free recieving, not texting.

Dave - Wow, thats definately quite complicated. Thanks for explaining the terms/process, that really helps.

Koan - Hmm, it sounds like they were quite persistent. I've had a bad habit of being "nice" and agreeing to things/buy things when I don't need them. I'll definately refuse those offers as they are quite costly. I'll have to remember my passport, too. :D

http://mb.softbank.jp/mb/en/price_plan/whiteplan/index.html

What is the difference between SMS, MMS, and Sky Mail?

Actually on this page I see theres free sending/recieving SMS between Softbank users. Was that the plan you were reffering to JP?