May 18, 2010

my new ketai denwa (mobile phone)

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Yes it's green and yes I have charms hanging off it. But who cares, I like it so that's all that counts, this phone is with Softbank (Japanese phone company) and it's a really good student plan as well and this phone was one of the cheapest ones available.

For those ninja's out there who saw the Jelly Bean phone ad from a while ago, this is it!

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My charms that I got for my phone, of course Domo-Kun and also a glow in the dark Kodama. A Kodama, if you don't know is the tree spirits from Princess Mononoke and I scored this one from the Studio Ghibli store in Nagoya.

For future ICS Students: when buying a mobile you need your Student ID card, Alien Registration Card and your National Health Card, your Inkan and some money, don't forget the money like I did since in Australia when you sign up for a phone there's no upfront payments.

It's good to bring a Japanese person with you since it makes things a lot easier and there are three big companies to choose from:
-AU
-Softbank
-Docomo

Docomo is the most expensive and international students are split between AU and Softbank, with Softbank I get free calls to other soft bank phones from 1am-9pm (if I remember correctly since I hardly make calls), free emails to other Softbank members (they use mail here instead of SMS so it's good to keep in contact with friends and family back home too) and I pay I think 980YEN/Month and I get like 4500YEN worth of calls so it's kind of like the $10 Cap back home. I can't really comment on AU but from what Holly has told me she gets free calls to 3 AU numbers of her choice.

5 comments:

  1. Oh, snap! That's one hot phone you have there :)
    Totally owns all phones in Australia...why can't we have nice ones back here .__.;;
    Hey, Steven, do you know why we can't use Japanese phone's in Australia? I heard it has something to do with the simcards.

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  2. Does it have emoji? That's all I'd care about.

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  3. Anita, apparently we can't use Japanese phones is because it uses a different network called CDMA, which we used to have in Australia, but now we use only GSM but I have heard of some places that can make Japanese phones work in Australia.

    Carey, yes it has emoji, lots of it too. I didn't realise how many there were until you mentioned it.

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  4. (For any future ICS folk)
    AU has free email to every provider too, not exclusively to AU, for about the same price a month.

    At least, that was the package with about 5 different phones. If you wanted a fancy phone that could probably transform it would cost more, of course.

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