Wifi or pay phones on Shinkansen?

I will be arriving at Narita and taking the train directly to Kyoto.I will be in Japan for only 5 days so am not renting a cell phone. I will need to contact the friend who is meeting me in Kyoto to let her know which train I am on. I know there are pay phones in the station but am wondering if there are also pay phones on the Shinkansan or if the WIFI has been installed yet. Thanks for any help.

There are pay phones on the shinkansen. Cell phones will also work, unless you pass through tunnels. Wifi is planned to be installed on some train sets of the Tokaido Shinkansen from spring 2009.

Thanks Uji!

is there any update on this?

travelbug,

is there any update on this?

Only that the service is scheduled to start in March, and will be available only on "Nozomi" services operated by the latest N700 series trains.

that's just great for JR Pass users.......

Actually to be technical, JR Pass doesn't cover fares on Nozomi so it's great pretty much just for salarymen making numerous trips up and down Japan.

Since this question is still getting some replies,I thought I would let anyone interested how it turned out. I was using a JR pass from Narita. I took the express from the airport to Shinagawa and changed to the Hikari Shinkansen to Kyoto. Shinagawa was very quiet at 9:30AM and it was an easy connection. I bought a phone card on the train. The lowest price available was 1000yen. The payphone on the train could only be used to cellphones of one company (NTT I think) so it did not work to call my friend's cellwhich was from another cell company, However, it worked fine to call a land line and I was able to reach her that way.

sorry - I was being sarcastic about JR Pass and Nozomi. I am aware that you cannot use JR Pass to travel on Nozomi.

mcsl,

Thanks for the follow-up report of your experiences. I was surprised to hear that you couldn't call non-NTT (i.e. docomo) mobile phones, and, to be honest, I was a bit dubious, but on checking, I see that you are indeed right. Typical NTT business attitude... not that anyone actually uses those pay phones these days.