Visitors from the UK make up around 10% of all travelers (around 3.4 million people) to Japan each year.
Of course, on any trip – long or short – it is important to stay connected: going online, reading the news, sending and receiving emails, using messenger, etc. In addition, you will occasionally need to call local phone numbers and send or receive text messages – sometimes this is just as important as ordering food or confirming a payment.
Of course, someone might say that it is possible to use data roaming. But we all know that this is extremely expensive! In fact, using standard roaming for two or three weeks can easily cost more than your round-trip flight! And roaming coverage is not reliable everywhere in Japan.
But there is a solution! And it’s absolutely perfect for UK professionals and travelers visiting Japan: the Mobal Japan SIM card.
The connectivity problem in Japan
Despite Japan’s overall technological advancement, stable Wi-Fi is often only available in the largest cities such as Osaka, Fukuoka, Yokohama, Nagoya, Sapporo and Tokyo. Once you travel outside of these areas, especially through sparsely populated (but scenic) regions, stable Wi-Fi becomes a luxury. You will rarely find it outside of your hotel, and in small towns it may not be available at all.
How can you translate stop names, traffic signs, city names or information boards without internet access? How can you talk to locals about everyday things like directions, ATMs, restaurants, or ferry schedules?
Feel like a local with a local Japan prepaid SIM card from Mobal: make and receive calls, send and receive SMS messages, and use high-speed mobile data for instant translation of images and text. With Mobal, there are no data speed limits within a selected plan, making your trip and stay in Japan much more fun!
Why choose a Japan SIM card before flying?
With Mobal you enjoy practical advantages such as:
- Prepaid travel SIM Japan card with no contract requirement
- English speaking customer support
- Long term and short term options
- Different plans to suit the budget
- Excellent nationwide coverage
- A real Japanese phone number
- Ability to enable a WiFi hotspot to share data with your devices.
Key benefits of Mobal
Mobal has designed its service to provide maximum convenience to travelers arriving in Japan:
- It is possible to pre-order the Mobal Japan SIM card before a trip – it can either be sent to the UK address or simply picked up at the airport upon arrival or even delivered to the hotel room
- There are several mobile networks in Japan. However, the SIM card will automatically switch to the best available network when you move (you can also select one manually) to ensure the best possible network coverage across the country for UK internet travelers
- Simple and transparent pricing with no fine print or difficult-to-understand calculations
- Profits go to charities as part of Mobal’s ongoing commitment to positive social impact.
How to activate and use it
Activating the card is very simple: insert the physical SIM card into your mobile phone and select it in the settings as the main card for calls, SMS and data in Japan. Normally, new SIM cards are automatically recognized by phones as soon as they detect a new network and the device registers with it (you will usually receive an SMS or info message confirming this). If your phone detects multiple networks, you can select the one with the best signal quality (as long as it is immediately visible), ask someone nearby or contact one of our office staff/courier. If you are not satisfied with the connection quality on a particular network, there is usually a technical option in your phone’s network settings to switch to another carrier. This is common in regions where multi-provider coverage is available in Japan.
Sometimes a phone cannot be switched to a different carrier’s SIM card if it was originally sold with a specific carrier. Such phones are called “locked” and typically cannot use other SIM cards unless they are technically unlocked (which we don’t worry about). Therefore, make sure your phone is unlocked before purchasing a Mobal card to avoid any problems.
If you have difficulty connecting to the service, our staff at the Japanese offices will be happy to help you – just contact them.
Real life scenario
Imagine you are a graphic designer from Glasgow. You came to Japan on a short-term contract for a three-week work project. Your work requires sending large amounts of graphics files to servers, exchanging documents with your company’s branch office, and downloading those files to your computer. If you rely on standard roaming from your UK data provider, you’ll typically pay between £0.60 and £3 per megabyte of data (excluding WiFi, mobile roaming only). For example, if you need to exchange 25 gigabytes of data during your stay, that would cost between £15,360 and £76,800 on standard roaming! At Mobal, a plan with 30 gigabytes included costs just £21.6 (¥4,378). And if you need more than 30GB for your work, you can simply activate another package on the go for the same price – saving a fortune!
Diploma
Stay connected during your stay in Japan so you can travel, relax, work and communicate with ease. Poor or no connectivity can cause significant inconvenience. Order your Japan SIM card from Mobal today and travel stress-free!
