Cell Phones

Rie and I are in a new country, and the way these things work, we needed new cell phones. We just wanted basic cell phones for talking and texting, but I got drawn in by the free smart phone. I would have considered the iPhone, but they are tied to SoftBank in Japan. SoftBank does not have good service at Rie's mother's house. Only DoCoMo works down there, so that is where we went for our phones.

Rie and I walked about 30 minutes to our nearest DoCoMo shop and checked out the options. I liked the HT-03A phone, which is free with a two-year contract. In the U.S. it is called the myTouch 3G and its international name is the HTC Magic. It is an Android phone with a touch screen, wi-fi, GPS, Internet, and all sorts of other features and is a Google brand phone.

A few days later, we went back to the DoCoMo shop to get our new phones. The guy helping us did not seem to bright and nothing seemed to be easy. We both wanted the Google phone, but they only had one in stock. The phone comes in black or white. I wanted black, and Rie wanted white. The one in stock was white, so we decided to get Rie's and come back another day for mine.

DoCoMo has a 50+ page magazine with all of their data plans and options in it and we flipped back and forth for a while trying to figure out what we wanted. First, we get to choose how many minutes per month we need. Rie has more friends and family here, so she needs a medium level. Next, the guy explained the Internet usage choices. It is a sliding scale. Internet on the phone costs about $3 per month if you don't use it. The more you use, the more it costs until it plateaus at about $60 per month. We figured we could use it sparingly and not pay too much. We got some papers to sign and the fine print mentioned that the phone receives automatic updates for all of its options. These updates count towards its Internet usage. So, basically, without ever using the Internet, we will reach the maximum price every month.

So, after some more thought, we decided that Rie does not really want Internet. She found a nice pink phone for herself and I decided to take the white Google phone.

Next, the guy mentioned that phones don't come with call waiting or voice mail here. If we want those options, it costs about $5 more per month. We said okay, after which he sold us the extended warranty on the phones. That seemed like a good idea so we got that too.

Eventually, he mentioned that we could put Rie's family on a family plan and have free calls among all of us. That was free, but we did not have Rie's family's phone numbers with us to set it up then.

After 2 1/2 hours and about $30 for Rie's phone, we left with our two new phones.

The next day, Rie went back to add her family to the plan. Unfortunately, the guy forgot to mention that he has to call them to confirm. It was during the day and Rie's brother and mother were at work, so Rie was unable to add them to the plan then.

Two days later, we went back in the evening to add the family members. Also, my voice mail and call waiting were not working. Luckily, we got a different guy this time and he did not look at us like we were stupid every time we did not understand one of their crazy rules, policies or exceptions. He was nice enough to explain to me that the Google phone does not qualify for the reduced price bundle of call waiting and call forwarding. I have to pay about $4 per month for each of these services. An hour later, we were done for the fourth and final time.

There were so many added fees and exceptions and last minute changes, that I have no idea what our phone bill will be. I guess we will find out in a few weeks when it arrives.

In the meantime, I am enjoying my new phone immensely. It has all sorts of useless features like a level and a star chart. I can also surf the Internet and download all sorts of applications and games. It also takes video and pictures. I downloaded an application to read bar codes and search for the product on the Internet. Many advertisements in Japan include 2d bar codes for people who want more information.