Switzerland is the "reverse" of Japan. It's absent on the roaming list (what seems to be true BTW) but it's present in the calculator :). I think that everyone should be very careful about relying on 09.is content :?

So if i totally understand the japanese pre pay system, you need to be a japanese resident to use it, anyone have any idea on if its possible to buy a 'unlocked' mobile phone out there, if so any ideas on how to by them?

Except for some of the 3G handsets formerly sold by Vodafone, every handset I've seen in Japan is totally specific to the carrier. Japan is all about monopolies. The concept of "unlocked" does not exist.

ok hypothetically, if i bought a locked softbank/ vodafone handset and brought it to the uk would it work with a uk vodafone sim in it, or if i brought a japanese handset out there and if it was locked (though with no japanese equiv of a sim, where applicable) would it work over here, sorry for sounding like a noob but i really dont understand the japanese mobile system! and what would its network lock status be like over here?

Japanese 3g Handsets
 

If you brought a Soft-Bank 3g handset to England, unlocked the same, and inserted a 3 SIM in the phone, it would work. The other standards are complete incompatible with the rest of the world except for a couple of very high priced hybrid phones that never sold very well. There was a CDMA handset that did the Japanese variant of CDMA and the 800mhz version of CDMA used in many other countries, but it didn't even do the 1900mhz band of CDMA so countries like the US were not covered very well. You could roam into China, Korea, and OZ with the phone.

When I visited Japan a couple of years ago, I decided that the best approach was to go with rental. The English language version of the DoCoMo page suggested that you could purchase a prepaid, but everything else I heard suggested to the contrary. Until a year or two ago, you could purchase prepaid handsets from some party stores, but then Japan started "cracking" down on prepaid registrations because of a kidnapping where the kidnappers used a prepaid phone. I've heard that even American soliders and sailors stationed in Japan have a hard time buying Japanese prepaids because they lack the necessary Japanese documents.

I'm not sure how much discretion a friendly merchant has, but language is a huge issue in Japan. My niece purchased a prepaid in Japan after the crack down, but I don't know how she did it, but she is exceptionally cute and a fluent Japanese speaker. She also legally lived in Japan from 2000 through 2002, currently works for a Japanese company's US office, probably still had some Japanese ID card and certainly has friends who would buy one for her. I hate to use her as a precedent for anything.

Re: Japanese 3g Handsets
 

Military may have trouble buying a phone in town but there are usually agents on-base who are set up to sell to the military. At least every one I've met has a Japanese phone.

Re: Japanese 3g Handsets
 

so what about buying sim free phones out there or even vodafone/ softbank phones and bringing them back to blighty


how easy is it to get just the handset, and costs for a mid range handset with camera, bt, media player?

Re: Japanese 3g Handsets
 

Someone will have to tell me what a "blighty" is. What do you mean by "SIM free", a GSM phone without a SIM? A PDC or CDMA phone that doesn't use a SIM? I'm confused.
AFAIK, You can't get those features without a contract. Prepaid phones are very basic.

When I wandered down Ashibara (sp) Street, there were phones for sale including unlocked GSM phones for export. I didn't think that they were wonderful deals. Unlocking (or buying a factory unlocked) PDC or Foma phone doesn't make sense where there is no other network in the world that uses that technology.

ahh i want to get hold of some japanese mobile phone type gadgetry...aww poo...



ps blighty/ britain....for those who wanted to know....