Lost my keitai denwa

I lost my phone yesterday. It is a prepaid phone from Softbank. The thing is even though I am here on a student visa and I got all the documents (alien card etc) it was very hard to buy a prepaid phone. Today I went back to the store where I bought it from last week and they were not able to let me buy another one.

I tried docomo and they were also not able to sell me one. I have no clue what to do now.

I plan to go back to the bar where I lost it later tonight when it opens with high hopes.

I would prefer to buy a new prepaid phone now but I simply have no idea where. All the stores so far can or will not help me to buy a prepaid phone even though I explain to them my situation.

Can anyone advise me a store in Tokyo?

Thanks a lot

Marinus Jr-san,

First, have you tried calling or texting your own cell phone?

It seems likely that your phone is still wherever you left it, so the bar may have it. If not, someone may have turned it in to a local koban (police box).

If you are extremely anxious about waiting until the bar opens to find out whether or not your cell phone is there, you could always try to find the contact information for the bar and call/email them at your earliest convenience. With a little luck, someone will be available to respond before the bar opens and may be able to help you.

Perhaps the reason that the stores are uneasy about selling you another one is because if you find your old one, what will you do with the new one? Will you try to return it? Then it would become a headache for them. Just my thinking on the matter. If your old one is gone for good (i.e. destroyed or voided), then I would think that they would have no problem with issuing you a new one.

Good luck! I hope someone else can be of more assistance. ^_^

If the visiting to the bar turns out to be in vain, I strongly reccomend you to go to the nearest koban where you think you have lost it, because there are many cases that lost keitais come back there.

They even try and contact the owner of the phone when they collect it, but when the situation concerns foreign language, the police officers may get intimidated or simply not know how to contact you.

Marinus Jr,

First of all, I wonder if you have read Softbank's English page where it says "Stolen/Lost Handsets."
http://mb.softbank.jp/en/customer_support/stolen_lost.html

Either way, I strongly advise you to contact Softbank as soon as possible and have your line canceled so that your phone will not be abused for crime. Mobile phone abuse is one of the most common crimes in Japan. Since your phone is prepaid, you may not be loosing anything, but other victims might. I'm quite sure they have an emergency number, so dial them now.

It is against the law, or by-law or regulations or whatever it was that I forfot, for a person to own more than one mobile phone from one phone company. Again, this is to avoid abuse. This may be the reason they won't let you buy a new phone. Either way, you can discuss it with the English-speaking operators.

The legal limit on the number of mobile phones for individuals is 5, not 1.