Visitors from the UK make up about 10% of all travellers (around 3.4 million people) to Japan each year.
Naturally, during any trip — whether long or short—it’s essential to stay connected: go online, read the news, send and receive emails, use messengers, etc. On top of that, you’ll occasionally need to make calls to local phone numbers and send or receive text messages — sometimes it is as essential as ordering food or confirming a payment.
Of course, someone might say it’s possible to use data roaming. But we all know that’s extremely expensive! In fact, using standard roaming for two or three weeks can easily cost more than your round-trip flight! And roaming coverage isn’t always reliable everywhere in Japan.
But there’s 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 found only in the biggest cities, such as Osaka, Fukuoka, Yokohama, Nagoya, Sapporo, and Tokyo. Once you travel outside these areas, especially through sparsely populated (but scenic) regions, stable Wi-Fi becomes a luxury. You’ll rarely find it beyond your hotel, and in small towns, it may be nonexistent.
Without Internet access, how can you translate stop names, road signs, city names, or info boards? How can you talk with locals about everyday matters such as directions, ATMs, where to eat, or ferry schedules?
With a local prepaid SIM Japan from Mobal, you’ll feel like a local yourself: make and receive calls, send and receive SMS messages, and use high-speed mobile data for instant image and text translation. Mobal has no data speed limits within a chosen plan, making your journey and stay in Japan much more fun!
Why Choose a Japan SIM Card Before You Fly
With Mobal, you’ll enjoy convenient benefits such as:
Prepaid travel SIM Japan card with no contract required
English-speaking customer support
Long-term and short-term options
Various plans to fit the budget
Excellent nationwide coverage
A real Japanese phone number
Ability to enable a Wi-Fi hotspot to share data with your devices.
Key Advantages of Mobal
Mobal has designed its service to provide maximum convenience for travelers arriving in Japan:
It’s feasible to order the Mobal Japan SIM card in advance before a trip—it can either be shipped to one’s UK address or easily picked up at the airport upon arrival, or even delivered to one’s hotel room
Japan has several mobile networks, but the SIM card automatically switches to the best available network as you move (you can also manually choose one), ensuring the best possible coverage throughout the country for UK travellers Japan internet
Simple and transparent pricing with no fine print or tough-to-comprehend calculations
Profits go to charity as part of Mobal’s ongoing commitment to positive social impact.
How to Activate and Use
Activating the card is very easy: insert the physical SIM card into your mobile phone and select it in the settings as the main one for calls, texts, and data while in Japan. Usually, new SIM cards are automatically recognized by phones as soon as they detect a new network, and the device registers with it (you’ll typically get an SMS or info message confirming this). If your phone detects several networks, you can choose the one with the best signal quality (if it’s immediately visible), ask people nearby, or one of our office staff members/couriers. If you’re not satisfied with the connection quality on a certain network, there’s usually a technical option in your network settings on the phone to switch to another mobile provider. This is common practice in regions where coverage from multiple providers is available in Japan.
Sometimes, a phone can’t switch to another carrier’s SIM card if it was originally sold attached to a specific provider. Such phones are called “locked” and usually can’t use other SIM cards unless technically unlocked (which we do not handle). So make sure your phone is unlocked before purchasing a Mobal card to avoid any issues.
If you experience difficulties connecting to the service, our staff in Japanese offices will gladly help you—just reach out to them.
Real-life scenario
Imagine you’re a graphic designer from Glasgow. You’ve come to Japan on a short-term contract for a three-week work project. Your work requires sending large amounts of graphic files to servers, exchanging documents with your company’s branch office, and downloading them 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 (without Wi-Fi, using only mobile roaming). If during your stay you need to exchange, let’s say, 25 gigabytes of data, it would cost you between £15,360 and £76,800 in standard roaming! With Mobal, however, a plan with 30 gigabytes included costs only £21.6 (¥4,378). And if you need more than 30 GB for your work, you can simply activate another package on the go for the same price—saving a fortune indeed!
Conclusion
While in Japan, stay connected so you can travel, relax, work, and communicate comfortably. Poor connectivity—or none at all—can cause major inconvenience. Order your Japan SIM from Mobal today and travel stress-free!