Good advice. And you can recharge the phones online at the Softbank website!

I like so much this goo idea, cause im from italy and in september im gonna go to japan, i wonna a mobile phone to use there and here!

Wow. Housetek thanks for this info. I'm going in September for a year, and the skype combo sounds like the best bet. I will definitely try that out so I can keep in contact with my close friends back home. Thanks a lot for this.

thank you, this will be very useful! :)

how much money is 100yen in the us?

WOW thats some good advice! I needs to get me one asap- in Japan with no friends suck :P I miss my home and buds, but I gotta check this out. Any other good tips you have?

lol at the English speaking scardey-cats.
I did the same thing too ^^;;
When I finally got the courage they showed my rental plans, but they didn't sound as cheap as this ^_^

as of now one U.S. Dollar is equal to 115 Yen

yea definitely take a look into the skype thing, its nice to have your friends and family be able to call you on your Japaneses cell phone at any time

also it can be done in reverse where you can set up another skype account and call a japanese number to be forwarded to a friends number

and you can change the forwarding number at any time as long as you have a internet account or a way to access your skype account.

unfortunately it only lets you forward to one constant number at a time.

but still worth it in my book

Nah, I'll just make my cheap ass folks and friends get phone cards and phone me- NYC has like 2 hours for $5. Beats KDDI's 1110 yen for 37 minutes :cool:
[Such a rip! I'm like "hey, que pasa? uh huh. huh. okies, byetalktoyoulater!" w/each call]

sounds cool, but i got a question

dont you get charged by skype for the forwarding? like, who pays for the call to go from skype to japan :confused:

If its free then thank you for the advice.. you'll be saving me me $$$$$$$$$$