The Japanese are masters in the art of keeping in touch, but for a
supposedly high-tech nation their communications infrastructure can at
times seem rather old-fashioned. It's not unusual, for example, to see
post office staff counting on an abacus. Public telephones are available
in the most unlikely of places, including on top of Mount Fuji during
the climbing season, but few allow you to make international calls, and
Internet cafés are thin on the ground outside the main urban centres. At
least every convenience store has a fax machine for public use, and at
all the major stations and top bookstores in the cities you can buy
English-language newspapers and magazines
Mail
Japan's mail service is highly efficient and fast, with post offices (
yubin-kyoku ) all over the country, easily identified by their red-and-white
signs of a T with a parallel bar across the top, the same symbol that
you'll find on the red letterboxes. Letters posted within Japan should
get to their destination in one to two days, and all post can be
addressed in Western script ( romaji ) provided it is clearly printed.
Inside urban post offices there are separate counters, with English
signs, for postal and banking services; in central post offices you can
also exchange money, at rates comparable to those in banks. Within Japan,
a stamp ( kitte ) for a letter up to 25g costs ¥80, and for a postcard (
hagaki ) ¥50. For overseas post to anywhere in the world, it costs ¥70
to send a postcard and ¥90 for an aerogram. Letters up to 25g cost ¥90
to Asian destinations, ¥110 to North America, Australasia, Europe and
the Middle East, and ¥130 to Africa and South America. Each extra 25g
costs ¥50, ¥80 and ¥100 respectively. Stamps are also sold at
convenience stores, shops displaying the post office sign, and at larger
hotels.
If you need to send bulkier items or parcels back home, all post offices
sell reasonably priced special envelopes and boxes for packaging, with
the maximum weight for an overseas parcel being 20kg. A good compromise
between expensive air mail and lengthy sea mail is Surface Air Lifted
(SAL) mail, which takes around three weeks to reach most destinations,
and costs between the two.
Central post offices generally open Monday to Friday 9am to 7pm,
Saturday 9am to 5pm and Sunday 9am to 12.30pm, with most other branches
opening Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm only. A few larger branches may also
open on a Saturday from 9am to 3pm, and may operate after-hours services
for parcels and express mail. The Tokyo International Post Office, next
to Tokyo Station, is open daily 24 hours for both domestic and
international mail .
Poste restante ( tomeoki or kyoku dome ypbin ) is available at the
larger central post offices in the big cities, but mail will only be
held for thirty days before being returned. The same goes for American
Express offices (which only accepts mail for card holders), unless it's
marked "please hold for arrival". American Express has offices in Tokyo
.
For sending parcels and baggage around Japan, take advantage of the
excellent, inexpensive takuhaibin (or takkypbin , as it's more commonly
known after the successful tradename of one of the courier companies) or
courier delivery services , which can be arranged at most convenience
stores, hotels and some youth hostels. These services - which typically
cost under ¥2000 - are especially handy if you want to send luggage (usually
up to 20kg) on to places where you'll be staying later in your journey
or to the airport to be picked up prior to your departure.
Mail and telephone glossary
|
Post |
yubin |
|
Post office |
yubin-kyoku |
|
Stamp |
kitte |
|
Postcard |
hagaki |
|
Courier delivery service
|
takkyubin |
|
Poste restante
|
tomeoki/kyoku dome yubin
|
| |
|
Telephones
|
|
Telephone |
denwa |
|
Mobile phone
|
keitai-denwa
|
|
Phonecard |
terefon kado
|
Phones
You're rarely far from a payphone in Japan, but only from certain ones -
usually grey or metallic silver and bronze colour, with a sign in
English - can you make international calls . Because of phonecard scams,
it's sometimes difficult to locate these phones - if you're having
problems, try a major hotel or international centre.
In some restaurants and coffee shops you'll find antique dial phones
that only accept ¥10 coins (which will get you ninety seconds of local
talk time), but the vast majority of payphones take both coins (¥10 and
¥100), as well as phonecards ( terefon kydo ). The latter come in ¥500
(50-unit) and ¥1000 (105-unit) versions and can be bought in department
and convenience stores and at station kiosks. Virtually every tourist
attraction sells specially decorated phonecards, which come in a vast
range of designs, though you'll pay a premium for these, with a ¥1000
card only giving ¥500 worth of calls.
For local calls, you should use ¥10 rather than ¥100 coins in payphones;
that way you'll get back any unused money. For international calls, it's
best to use a phonecard, and to call between 7pm and 8am Monday to
Friday, or at any time on weekends or holidays, when the rates are
cheaper. Alternatively use a pre-paid calling card, such as Brastel (advertised
in all the Tokyo English-language media), to undercut the local rates
altogether. All toll-free numbers begin with either tel 0120 or 0088;
for operator assistance for overseas calls, dial 0051.
Mobile phones ( keitai-denwa , sometimes just shortened to keitai ) have
become wildly popular since the deregulation of the telecommunications
market a few years ago, and it's not unusual to see trendy young things
in the cities carrying a couple of the sleek fashion accessory-style
phones. Announcements are now common on trains and in cinemas asking
customers to refrain from using their mobile phones, though they're
often ignored. You can rent a mobile phone while you're in Japan; NTT Do
Co Mo Mova Rental Centre (2-6-21 Yaesu, Chpo-ku, Tokyo, tel 0120-334630
or 03/3243-6801) charges ¥1500 per day plus ¥2000 deposit; there's no
deposit, though, if you use a credit card. Similar deals are available
from Japan Direct Dialling Company (tel 0120-334630) and Sony Finance
International (tel 0120-680100).
Faxes, email and the Internet
Most hotels and youth hostels will allow you to send a fax for a small
charge, while receiving a fax is usually free if you're a guest.
Alternatively, most central post office or convenience stores (often
open 24hr) have public fax machines.
The Internet and email had a slow start in Japan, but now most major
cities now have at least one cybercafé, and Web sites are booming. The
instances of free access at NTT offices and other places is fast
disappearing; in an Internet cafe you should expect to pay around ¥500
or less per hour. If you want to receive emails, however, and you're not
carrying your own computer, you might want to set up an account with a
Web-based email service, such as Hotmail ( www.hotmail.com ) or Yahoo!
Mail ( www.yahoo.com ), before leaving home. This enables you to pick up
emails from any computer connected to the Web. The alternative is to
arrange a POP3 email account with your Internet Service Provider (ISP),
which allows you to access your account from any computer on the
Internet.
Cybercafés come and go fairly swiftly, although the copyshop Kinko's is
pretty reliable and has branches in most major cities, and the general
store chain Lawson is to install computers with Internet access into its
7500 outlets nationwide. Check the Listings sections of town and city
accounts in this Guide for Internet availability.
If you're travelling with your own computer , before setting off ask
your domestic ISP for details of any associated providers in Japan; AOL
has a local node, and another popular provider is Global Online Japan
(GOL) (tel 03/5334-1720, www.gol.com/start/jt ). Japanese phones use the
standard American RJ11 plug, and you can access the phone system in your
hotel or via your own cellphone. It's also possible to plug your laptop
into the increasingly widespread grey, international public phones -
they have a display screen and are fitted with both analog and ISDN
jacks, but only permit local access.
The media
If you read Japanese, Japan is a news-junkie heaven, with 166 daily
national and local newspaper companies printing some 70 million papers a
day, more than triple the amount for the UK and even topping the US and
China, despite both having much larger populations. Japan's top paper,
the Yomiuri Shimbun , sells over fourteen million copies daily, making
it the most widely read newspaper in the world. Lagging behind by about
two million copies a day is the The International Herald Tribune Asahi
Shimbun , seen as the intellectual's paper, with the other three
national dailies, the Mainichi Shimbun , the right-wing Sankei Shimbun
and the business paper the Nihon Keizai Shimbun , also selling
respectable numbers.
The only one of these five papers not to publish a daily English-language
version is the Sankei Shimbun , with the most widely available English-language
daily throughout Japan being the independent Japan Times (¥160).
Although far from sparkling, the Japan Times has the most comprehensive
coverage of national and international news, carries a major situations
vacant section every Monday, and has occasionally interesting features,
some culled from the world's media. Doing a better job on the features
front is the Daily Yomiuri (¥120), with specially compiled sections from
the Los Angeles Times on Saturdays, and Britain's Independent newspaper
on Sundays, as well as a decent arts and entertainment supplement on
Thursdays. Also worth a look is the Japan edition of the Financial Times
. Outside of the major cities, however, you'll be hard pushed to find
anything but the Japan Times , if that. The best places to hunt out
copies are the main stations and local international centres, which will
often have reference copies of foreign newspapers.
The most widely available English-language magazines are Time and
Newsweek . Bookstores such as Kinokuniya and Maruzen stock extensive (and
expensive) ranges of imported and local magazines; in Tokyo and Osaka,
Tower Records is the cheapest place to buy magazines. Local titles to
look out for include the weekly Tokyo Classified (free), Tokyo Journal
(¥600) and Kansai Time Out (¥300), well-written listings and features
magazines for their respective areas. With more a fanzine feel, The
Alien and The Outsider are published in Nagoya and Hiroshima
respectively.
If you're studying Japanese, or even just trying to pick up a bit of the
language during your vacation, the bilingual magazines Nihongo Journal
and Hiragana Times are worth searching out. AERA is one of Japan's most
respected weekly magazines, while Pia and the Walker series ( Tokyo
Walker, Kansai Walker ) are the best Japanese listings magazines.
Japanese television 's notorious reputation for silly game shows and
samurai dramas is well earned. If you speak no Japanese, you're likely
to find all TV shows, bar the frequent weather forecasts, totally
baffling - and only a little less so once you have picked up the lingo.
However, watching some TV during your stay is recommended if only
because of the fascinating insight it gives into Japanese society.
NHK, the main state broadcaster, has two channels (in Tokyo, NHK on
channel one and NHK Educational on channel three), which are roughly
equal to BBC1 and BBC2 in the UK, although much less adventurous. If you
have access to a bilingual TV, it's possible to tune into the English-language
commentary for NHK's nightly 7pm news. Films and imported TV shows on
both NHK and the commercial channels are also sometimes broadcast with
an alternative English soundtrack. In Tokyo, the other main channels are
Nihon TV (four), TBS (six), Fuji TV (eight), TV Asahi (ten) and TV Tokyo
(twelve), all flagship channels of the nationwide networks, with little
to choose between them.
The one bright spark on Japan's TV horizon is the increasing inroads
made by satellite and cable channels. As well as the ubiquitous CNN and
MTV, BBC World is now available in most major cities and is often part
of the room package at the top-end hotels. Perfect TV is a satellite
operation offering a wide range of channels, including several devoted
to sport and movies.
Radio is nowhere near as popular in Japan as TV, with most young people
preferring to listen to CDs and tapes. In Tokyo the main FM stations
broadcasting bilingual programmes are J-WAVE (81.3MHz) and Inter FM
(76.1MHz), although both tend towards the bland end of the music
spectrum. You can check out Inter FM on the Web at www.interfm.co.jp .
In the Kansai area, bilingual broadcasts are available on CO-CO-LO
(76.5MHz). In other areas of the country the only alternative is likely
to be the US armed forces' Far East Network (FEN), worth enduring just
once for its bizarre public-service announcements.
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