Softbank phone!

At long last, I have a Softbank phone! It's been such a struggle, as my earlier post describes.

But, basically, I needed someone over 20 with me to fill in the form and buy it under their name. And I found that person! I asked one of my housemates, Hyunwoo, if he could help me out, and he suggested one of his friends.

So I met up with her at a station just three stops along the Hanzomon line, to a place I'd never been before, so it was nice to see a new area of Tokyo. We went to the nearest Softbank shop and waited our turn for about 20 minutes or so, and were then told that because Softbank was planning to discontinue the prepaid service (Pay-as-you-go in the UK), they no longer sold them!

But they suggested we try Yodobashi Akiba, where I bought my camera. So we walked there, and were told that they didn't stock them anymore, because they were being discontinued! We tried a couple of the other major phone companies, NTT DoCoMo and KDDI but they said the same.

We were stumped, until we bumped into a friend of hers. She suggested we try the Sunkus convenience store round the corner. And they had one! The handset cost Y4,800 (just less than £25), which one of my housemates said was very expensive (that's really cheap!), and then you can choose between Y3,000 (£15) and Y5,000 (£25) top-ups.

It was a bit of a phaff sorting out the registration form. Once we'd filled it in, we had to copy her ID and then fax that copy and the form to Softbank. We had a bit of trouble, but it was sorted in the end and the phone works great!

We changed it so it displays all instructions, contacts and menus in English and you can have recorded information for when you ring them in English too if you ring 1400 from the phone (it's free but has to be done before you do anything else with the phone) and then try to decipher the Japanese (she had to help me), you press 3 at one point, listen for a bit longer, then press 2. Then the # (hash) key and 9 to finish the call.

Then we topped up for the first time by calling 1400 and then following the instructions given, typing in the number on the top-up card/ receipt with two stars around it.

The instruction manuals came in both English and Japanese, and seem quite comprehensive, despite making that most famous of mistakes - "Engrish".

So I got my phone! Which I'm very pleased about. But it does mean that anybody wanting to do a similar thing to me won't be able to get the prepaid service in a year or so. Which is a shame because it's perfect for foreigners coming over for a few months, not needing a contract for a year at a time (which I think is the only option once the discontinuation comes into play). But I think the reason is to do with people using prepaid phones for crime. Shame though.

After writing this, I was informed that only some pre-paid phones were being discountinued, so it's probably still possible to do the same thing as I did. You can read the new information here.

So, thank you very much for all your help Kyoko! You were very helpful and it was great to meet you. I'll take good care of our phone!