My Trip To Japan: Wifi

I read on the internet that it could be difficult to find free wifi in Japan. That is the exact opposite of South Korea. My experience while in Japan is that there is free wifi, but most of the time you have to sign up for some type of service. Also, there are a lot of time limits. Maybe others have had a different experience, I'm not sure.

I decided to rent a wifi hotspot and I am glad that I did. I had wifi with me at all times. I used it exclusively, even in my hotel room. It worked great in Tokyo as well as on my travels to other cities in Japan. When I go back to Japan in another year and a half, I will rent one again.

I rented my wifi hotspot from Global Advanced Communications. They seemed to be the most highly rated and their prices were about the same as their competitors. I rented the device for 12450 yen, which was slightly over $100 US at the time. The rental was for 17 days. Dependable, fast, and secure wifi for only $6 per day is a great deal. I ordered the 75 MBPS unlimited model. This was plenty fast to watch Youtube videos without any buffering.

The hotspot has a password, just like your home wifi. You simply look up the device name in the available wifi spots on your device. Then you just type in the password and you are ready to go. You can run 10 devices at the same time on this hotspot. This works well if you are a family and plan to stay near each other most of the time. I used this hotspot with the Kakaotalk app. I was able to use it to make wifi phone calls overseas. It worked as well as my phone does in the US.

I had the wifi hotspot delivered to my hotel. This service was included in the price. I picked it upon check in and dropped it off in its return envelope at the front hotel desk when I was leaving Tokyo. I definitely recommend shipping it to your hotel room instead of having it shipped to your home.

The hotspot is a little smaller than a cell phone. It fits in a pants pocket with ease. I usually carried it in my shoulder bag but did put it in my pocket when I just left the hotel to go out and get something to eat. You do have to charge it every night. I used it all day with my cell phone and Ipad every day. I never had the battery run down more than 50%. I used GPS and watched lots of videos. They do rent out a spare battery but I don't think it is necessary.

The wifi hotspot is just to the right of my cell phone. My cell phone is a Samsung S6 Edge, a standard size phone.