You’d think that with all the “Internet” I’m carrying around in my pocket now I might have managed to blog about it before now, but ironically or not I have delayed and delayed.

Back on Launch Day, I was indeed able to get myself a brand spankin’ new iPhone 3G S.  It came out in Japan on 26 June, which seems like ages ago at this point.  This was a Friday, and I booked the first flight I could catch just after work and literally jumped in my car and was on my way as soon as I was done at the Board of Education office.

Being that this is Japan, and unlike the United States where the vast majority of mobile phones are utter crap or at least severely aged in technology and usability by comparison, the phones here are incredible and so I didn’t exactly expect quite the sort of frenzy at the local Fukuoka Apple Store.  Still, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Lucky for me, I arrived at a time when the store was mostly empty, just before most people get off of work at the 6 PM mark in Japan and got in line.  I sat down not for two minutes before I was called up to the circular counter in the back where iPhone sets-up were being conducted, and when I left the store the counter was full.

The experience was not altogether a breeze, but it wasn’t super difficult, mostly just waiting.  I was perturbed that by Softbank policy, as a foreigner I couldn’t set up my account to debit direct from one of my local savings accounts because I haven’t lived in Japan for at least 26 months.  This is in contrast to DoCoMo, which let me do that immediately upon arrival.

Instead, I have to pay by credit card, and since it’s rather difficult for foreigners with no Japanese credit history to get a Japanese credit card I have to use my American credit card.  That is absolutely ridiculous.

I was more perturbed by the facts that:

1. Although I was the first to inquire about pre-orders and the first called back about securing one, I couldn’t get one because I couldn’t come to the store before launch day to take care of contract details.
2. Even though I made it clear to the store reps over the phone before arrival on multiple occasions that I was a foreigner, this question of savings account debit versus credit card was never mentioned, so I need not have brought my bank book and ATM card.

Another irritating part of the experience that was no fault of Apple’s was that my credit card was declined upon attempted purchase of the phone itself.  My bank apparently thought that the large purchase was odd and flagged it.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t use my previous phone at that time to call the US and get it sorted out because my number had already been transferred to my Softbank account.  Also, the store wouldn’t let me use their phone to call internationally.  So, I had to pay in cash for the phone itself.

This situation also occurred because another tax of being a foreigner is that the “discount” on the phone sort of works in reverse.  Most of the time in Japan, if your phone isn’t free with a new contract then you pay for it via monthly instalments.

Instead, I am going to receive a set of monthly “discounts” to my bill until the two year contract ends, which also means that if I quit my contract early I lose a portion of the phone subsidy.  In the US the phone subsidy is immediate via the standard retail price of the phone.

I ended up spending some two hours at the store, signing up and purchasing the phone and then setting it up and some more account features like my mobile email addresses with a little help from a Mac Genius.  Oddly, the store was out of iPhone armbands so I couldn’t get one of those, but I did manage to get some essential playlists and all the apps I prepared far in advanced synced to that shiny pretty thing.

The MNP (Mobile Number Portability) system worked like a charm.  Before my phone was even completely set up, the number was already transferred over to my new Softbank account.