Rental Portable Wifi device

It turned out to be a good decision that I rented a pocket Wifi device from Global Advanced Communications in Japan. It was easy, simple, convenient, and provided good value.

Some U.S. cellular phone service providers provide service in Japan. We use T-Mobile, and our phones worked fine in Japan. If your provider's service covers Japan, be sure to turn on data roaming before you go to Japan so that your can send and receive data there. Otherwise, you'll have no Internet access, won't be able to access Web sites, use email, won't be able to use certain apps, etc.

But if you intend to use your phone for navigation, translation, websites, email, or any other functions that use much data, you may get much slower data transmission and receipt than you're used to in your home country. That seriously hampered navigation and other things I needed to do with my smartphone in Japan. And when I'd turn on my pocket Wifi device from Global Advanced Communications and connect to that, I noticed much faster data usage and better functioning of key apps.

If your cellular service provider does not provide service in Japan, you can rent a SIM card for your phone when you arrive in Japan. But that SIM card will only enable that one phone to send and receive data. A key advantage with a rental portable Wifi device is that you can connect more than one of your devices to its Wifi signal and you can also share its Wifi signal with your companions. That's convenient and saves money versus renting SIM cards.

I chose Global Advanced Communications' Standard Wifi plan with their 150 mbps device. It was plenty fast and reliable for my uses. It fits in a pants pocket if you want to put it there. Its battery had a good run time and provided Wifi for many hours a day. It was convenient for me to place the order before I arrived in Japan, pick it up at the little post office in Narita airport, use it while in Japan, and return it to Global Advanced Communications in their postage paid envelope by dropping it in a postal box. Simple and easy.