The Great Cell Phone Caper

As I learned firsthand yesterday, these days it is hard to get a cell phone in Japan. It seems that a few years back the Japanese government, in a state of ever vigilant readiness against international terrorism, enacted a law that bars foreigners from purchasing cell phones of any type if they are unable to produce valid Japanese identification.

If my previous run in with the Asakusa police two years ago is anything to go by, the reasoning behind this is that foreigners will use said cell phones to order bomb making materials that they will then assemble and cart around in their backpacks while returning to the Asakusa Weekly Mansion in the dead of night.

But I digress.

In short, if you are staying in Japan for under 90 days and do not possess a government issued Alien Registration Card (外国人登録証明書), you’re fresh out of luck. My trip to Akihabara had me visiting stores for all three major cell phone distributors and being turned away at each.

As I had expected, I also learned that my old DoCoMo cell phone (neat as it is) is basically a glorified brick. Since DoCoMo doesn’t employ any prepaid cell technology, there is no way to resurrect my phone from the dead save for initiating a new contract, which presents even more logistical problems than trying to get the prepaid variety.

All set to write a Japanese friend with my tail between my legs, I decided to end my search with a trip to the local SoftBank shop in Asakusa just for kicks. SoftBank seemed like the better choice for a prepaid phone since I learned that AU (the other major distributor) denies customers purchasing prepaid phones both answering machine and text messaging services.

Here’s how the ultimate heist went down. Actually, that’s too dramatic of a setup for what follows. Since the visitor’s sticker posted in my passport shows the default of a full 90 days stay on it, I realized that there was no way to prove that I was only staying in the country for one month instead of three and thus ineligible to buy a phone. That is, until asked for the mandatory government issued registration card that long term residents must all carry.

When asked to produce it within minutes upon arrival, I basically had no option but to lie in Japanese. I told the kindhearted salesman that I had just arrived and was staying for 90 days but hadn’t yet received my ID from the ward office. I told him I was doing company interviews and wanted to buy the cell as soon as possible. Most of this stuff was actually true, except for the length of stay part.

He had to call headquarters and ask them if they could make an exception for the nice gaijin who can speak Japanese. Overhearing the conversation, the bigwigs on the other end told him to obtain every imaginable snippet of information from my passport that he could for identity verification purposes.

Here is when, once again, I was saved by my expired Japanese visa from two years past. Just like the customs officer, the cell phone store clerk Ishikawa-san stared at the passport page in confusion. Never mind the fact that the page clearly shows that the visa expired two years ago. I just kept quiet. He actually read the visa out loud to himself in both English and Japanese. He read over the expiration year of 2006 but it just didn’t register. This is likely because it was written in roman numerals and not using the Japanese calendar and Heisei year format.

This expired visa is like a skeleton key for the entire city. The next thing I’m planning to do is go to the Imperial Palace waving my expired visa around and claim to be a foreign dignitary.

Suffice it to say, within the hour I walked away with my new pre-paid cell phone (you can see pictures down below). The entire package (with the phone and prepaid card itself) was around 85 dollars, a steal compared to the multiple hundreds of dollars required for an extended rental.

In many respects this phone is nicer than my more expensive contract model from DoCoMo. Since it’s a 3G phone, it may be able to work in the U.S. with a new SIM Card (I’m unsure). The phone has lots of features including a camera, multimedia video, internet, etc., though I’m unsure if it charges your card for using these items.

In any event, I’m glad that I was able to put my Japanese to use as a liar. I’ve now broken the law. On the bright side, when the cops stop me with my backpack full of explosives, the cell phone will be the least of my worries.

B.E.W.