Phone Stuff!

In this day and age, phones are a pretty large part of everyday life for everyone over the age of 14. While I'm not addicted to my phone or the internet in general (last fall I went completely off grid for five weeks and could only contact my friends and family by letter and one short weekly phone call), it is useful for contacting people, making friends, music, and browsing the interwebs. Phones can be very useful for travel because they are small and can do a lot. They can give you directions, translate things, and allow you to contact others. If I was going to Japan with family or for a shorter period of time I probably would just not use my phone for much besides music, but I'm going for two months by myself so having my phone be usable will be helpful.

So my phone is an iPhone 5C from AT&T in America. I got it summer of 2014 so I've had it for a while at this point. After doing some research, apparently there are two kinds of waves cell phones can accept depending on where you are in the world. There were three versions of the iPhone 5 made to accommodate the different waves (if I am using wrong terminology I'm sorry but I'm just trying my best to explain). My phone is from America, which happens to use the same waves as Japan. This means my phone is capable of picking up cell tower waves in Japan. I found information about the iPhone 5 on this website and it's well explained over there. You can probably look up similar information for your phone but for now I'm sticking to what my phone does.

Once you have established if your phone will or will not pick up cell tower waves in Japan, now you have to see how you want to get your cell phone use. Different carriers have different options and I looked into AT&T, my provider; Sprint, a provider mentioned on the Ojiya Study Abroad website; and pocket wifi rental.

Sprint: Apparently Sprint is owned by the Japanese company Softbank so you can use your phone there for either no extra charge or only $5, I've seen both.

AT&T: So AT&T offers something called AT&T Passport which is a basic data and talk plan with unlimited texting for a monthly charge of $40-$120 depending on the plan you pick.

Pocket Wifi: Basically you rent this little wifi router from a Japanese company that can pick up cell tower waves and convert them to wifi you can use for your phone, laptop, etc wherever you are.

There are also other options from other providers, prepaid phones, SIM cards, and just using roaming, but those are the three I looked into.

To be honest pocket wifi is sounding best to me because most of what I use my phone for requires wifi anyway. I still need to get more information (like if where I'm staying has internet), but for now these are my options.