Visiting Japan? Get a data sim card from Sakura Mobile so you can share your sushi and ramen on Instagram and Snapchat instantly with your friends and family!
About Sakura Mobile
Website: https://www.sakuramobile.jp/
Sakura Mobile offers various product for connectivity in Japan, including sim card, mobile wifi router (WiFi egg).
Data Sim Card: starting at 3,500 yen for 3gb
WiFi Egg: Various options available, see pricing
They also offer competitive and reasonable priced products for both short term visitors (less than 90 days) and long term (more than 90 days)! Their long-term plan are very competitive and do not require 2 year contracts at other carriers such as Softbank.
Price for short-term plan: https://www.sakuramobile.jp/pricing/
Long-term plan (> 90 days) price: https://www.sakuramobile.jp/long-term-plans/
Ordering and Pick Up
Ordering is easy from Sakura Mobile. Order from their website 3 days prior to trip, pick the plan you want, let them know the pick up location, and you are good to go!
Sakura Mobile offers multiple pick up options:
- Airport post office (including Haneda / Narita / Kansai)
- Hotels
- Local post office
- Residential address
Note that the post office at Kansai airport closes at 5pm. Since our flight arrived after that time, we cannot choose the airport post office option. Also, we stayed in Osaka in an Airbnb, and the host don’t allow mail on check in date. The helpful staff at Sakura Mobile helped us and found local post office close by the Airbnb, and we went there to pick up the next morning.
Picking up packing from post office is called Kyokudome in Japanese. After arriving at the post office, we just showed our ID to the staff and easily got the package! Sakura Mobile is also very considerate in sending a Japanese instruction in the email, so we can show the staff in case anything went wrong.
Set Up
In the package, it includes the sim card, nano / micro sim adapter, and a pin the ejecting the sim card slot on phones.
Android: The package includes instruction and APN setting for Android, which can also be found here.
iPhone: For iPhone, it is a bit more complicated as would need to download and install the APN profile. You would need internet to set up APN for iPhone, so you should definitely download prior to leaving for Japan! Also after using remember to remove the APN profile so you can connect back to your regular carrier.
iPhone APN profile: here
Coverage
Sakura Mobile uses NTT docomo network, which is Japan’s widest and most reliable 4G LTE Network. There is coverage across Japan, from northern Hokkaido to southern Okinawa!
Our trip was around Kansai and Tokyo area and there was flawless coverage everywhere, even on subways, basement of department stores, or even fast moving shinkansen!
Osaka Castle
Itsukushima Shrine
Miyajima – Selfie with deers!
Kyoto – Take pictures of beautiful Sakura and instantly share with your loved ones!
Tokyo – Meguro River
Tokyo – Ueno Park
Speed Test
Sakura Mobile uses Docomo’s LTE and 3G network. We ran several speed test around various part of Japan.
3G (HSDPA) gives download speed on 3.61Mbps and upload of 0.37Mbps, which is sufficient for most daily activity. Good thing about 3G is that it uses much less battery so you can use the phone for the whole day!
LTE is much speedier and gives download of 25.47Mbps and upload of 14.35Mbp, which is great for streaming video. However, it will drain your battery much faster.
Return
At the end of the trip, the sim cards will need to be mailed back to Sakura Mobile. They provide the prepaid return envelope in the package, so all you need to do is put the sim card in and mail them back!
We departed from Haneda Airport and there is a mail box on the departure level, right beside the up escalator for shops and restaurants. The mail box is cutely decorated with airplane!
Overall we were impressed by Sakura Mobile’s performance, convenience, and best of all, their superior customer service. We will definitely use them again when we visit Japan and would recommend to anyone!
Hope you enjoy this review of travel tips blog on Mokolate! In the meantime, be sure to visit my Instagram – Mizzmok for more fashion and lifestyle idea!
Ah thank you I might have considering this one when I go to Osaka ahead…
Thank you for your detailed review. My daughter will be studying in Japan for 3 months and we were overwhelmed with all the options. Your review was very helpful.