I'm moving to Japan! Any advice on the process?

If you want data, and the ability to make a phonecall, you have to have a contract pretty much. There are a few alternatives such as bmobile, and iijimo, (e.g. http://www.bmobile.ne.jp) but I would just go with the least hassle - as it's all going to be a hassle anyway.

Check out http://www.japanmobiletech.com too.

Good luck

 

Which mobile carrier that has the most fastest LTE network to date? Softbank, KDDI/au, or NTT Docomo?

 

To watch Western shows like South Park or CSI, you must have SkyPerfectTV! to watch these shows because Fuji TV or any other network didn't air Western Shows but some are dubbed for Japanese language.

 

kakaku.com is a price comparison site like pricewatch.com, they don't sell anything. Rakuten in Japan is just a marketplace, again they themselves don't sell anything....

 

Or just become more modern and get a good VPN service + Hulu or Netflix....

 

Ooooh! A visitor SIM compmany!
...
Except they flat-out don't let you make any calls? They say that "To have voice service in Japan, customers are required to have an ID with a Japanese address to prevent criminal use of the mobile phone" so what if I DO have an address?

Speaking of the internet, how does that work in Japan? How do I get internet for my place? And this is a bit of a random question, but do I need to convert the voltage to use a light in Japan? I have an awesome made in the UK lava lamp (made in the same factory that made them in the 60s!) that I'd love to use over there, but to my knowledge, lamps don't use power supplies, they just feed the electricity straight to the bulb. So would I just need to install a different watt bulb or something?

Back to my PC, it seems like it will cost $220.00 to ship it to Japan which is quite reasonable (it cost me $200 to originally ship it from one end of Australia to the other!) however it's going to take around 14 days to arrive. I'll need something to hold me over in the mean time, I was thinking I'd take over my old laptop, but it's such an old bastard that it won't be a whole lot of fun to use. I was thinking of maybe getting a new laptop, do you think a laptop would be useful over there? Right now, I hardly use my laptop but would one be useful for a teaching job? If so, should I buy it in Japan or here? I've found a nice deal an a reasonably powerful Toshiba laptop for $250 off, which is what I'd go for if there's not going to be much difference from buying in Japan.

 

I think your light will just be dim. It's like when the power grid isn't working 100%, lights will work but not bright. I could be wrong on that though, but it's my theory.

 

VPN... so 2012. Get the Hola plugin for Chrome and say goodbye to VPN overhead.

 

Chrome isn't on a console

VyprVPN has little overhead since they actually own local infra. I recommend it.

 

When I went to Tokyo last year, our hotel room had some basic cable/satellite service, and there was a smattering of western programming with bilingual audio support.

But OP, don't worry about it, Japanese TV is campy as fuck. You can sit and watch it for hours.

 

^ I really liked Japanese and Western TVs, the Japanese ones are for Tokusatsu, J-Drama, and a little bit of Anime. Western is for funny sketch shows like Simpsons, South Park, Big Bang Theory, etc.

 

It's still something, and any streaming service isn't great at handling a straight connection at such a distance. Does anyone really require a console for streaming? Just hook up a laptop to a TV. Voila!

 

I'm assuming that it is an incandescent lava lamp. If so it should use an Edison type screw bulb.
If you run it at half the voltage, it will only heat about half as much(P=VxI). This will probably cause the wax in the bottle to melt slowly, or not at all.

Cheap Solution(instead of buying a voltage transformer):
1.)find an incandescent bulb that uses the same bulb/socket size/wattage in japan, only find one that is 120 or 110(most likely) volts; instead of 220v or 240v.
2.)The cord may also need to be modified, or a travel adapter can be used.(so you can plug it in the wall).

Note: If the bulb is a 110 or 120 volts there is no need to step up the voltage. Additionally, a high efficient LED or CFL wont work because they just aren't hot enough.

 

I am very much looking forward to this. I enjoyed what I saw when I was there in high school, there was a monkey in people clothes and they rubbed something unpleasant on the monkey's paws and then started guessing where the monkey would try to rub it off. He rubbed it off on his clothes, I thought for sure he'd rub it on the ground!

That's right, it's an incandescent bulb with an Edison screw. Can you still get these in Japan? A know a lot of countries have outlawed them.

Checking the bulb, it says "240v" so if I can find a 100v bulb of the same wattage and a plug adapter, it sounds like everything should be good!

I've been contacted by the guy I'm replacing. He's been telling me a lot about what I'll be doing, but you know what's awesome? He's going to be leaving everything he currently has to me. This includes everything for the unit (including a TV!) as well as fiber optic internet and a mobile phone plan. Looks like I'll be all set!

 

Sorry, but the Hola plugin doesn't work with any streaming site.

 

I'm getting 1080p actually on every service with no hiccups. It's light years ahead of what I had before. I can leave the VPN on and not see any issues with what I do day to day.

 

I think you mean "every" streaming site. Indeed, it doesn't, but it works fine with most of them.

I think your connection is better than mine in general. Mine's... not bad but not fantastical.

 

I'm trying to watch polish tv (vod.tvp.pl) and after I startup hola and choose Poland, reload the page and the player starts, I still get a message "only for users from Poland". And youtube doesn't work as well, I get unknown error messages on a noise background, for content blocked in germany.

 

My guess is they've probably not invested a lot of R&D in getting sites outside of North America and the UK to work -- that's probably where 90% of their users are trying to watch videos from.

 

I'm surprised that no one has mention changing DNS settings to use services such as Netflix and Hulu. That's what I do, and it works great.

This thread in general is quite insightful, though, since I'm studying Japanese and planning to live there for a while, if not migrate permanently, in a few years time.