w00kie’s ramblings

I'm getting reports from my friends with iPhones here in Japan, since I still haven't gone crazy and taken one as a second phone. Some features have been completely borked by Softbank:

• There's no + for international calls. Apparently, Softbank's network does not support the + (country code) (your number) that is industry standard on all modern phones. Instead, they customize their keitais, which are manufactured to Softbank's specs by the nicely compliant Japanese manufacturers, to replace the plus sign with a special prefix: 010.
• The mail address @i.softbank.jp is not "push-compatible". This means you have to initiate a mail check to see if there is mail waiting, unlike @me.com mail which pushes the mails straight to your phone through the network without actual polling on your part.
  Softbank has implemented a sort of fake notification which must be a background process continually polling the server for new mails, showing the butt-ugly greyed-out fullscreen popup whenever you receive a message. Of course, there is no chime nor vibration hinting to a new event while the phone is in your pocket, making that mail address basically useless...

I hope Softbank gets its act together before I need to change phones. Sadly, even after knowing all these caveats, I still want one...

Joss Whedon's pet project, in answer to the writer's guild nonsense, came out yesterday: Dr. Horrible's sing-along blog. A mini-series exclusively for internet and for free, done on the cheap with his friends.

It's a mix between Pinky and the Brain, Mistery Men and a video blog, executed musical-style. It's brilliant, especially since I was a big Doogie Howser fan as a kid (Neil Patrick Harris) and burned through Whedon's Firefly series in a straight 2-days stand.

Act 2 will come out July 17th and Act 3 on July 19th. Catch it while it lasts!

If you're planning on buying an iPhone (it's a little too late now since they're already out of stock everywhere in Kanto) and you're a foreigner, there's a couple of things you need to be aware of before you head out to the Softbank shop:

1. Bring your Gaikokujin Torokusho (Alien Card) + Passport. It seems they now require the passport too.
2. Check your visa expiration date, the following rules apply:

From Softbank's website
本人確認書類を「外国人登録証明書＋外国パスポート」にてお申込される場合、以下項目をご注意ください。

1. 在留期限が90日未満の場合は回線契約ができません。
2. 在留期限が申込日より15ヵ月以内の場合、割賦購入（あっせん）契約による受付はできません。（店頭一括払いのみの受付となります）
3. 在留期限が申込日より15ヵ月超、27ヵ月以内の場合、割賦購入（あっせん）契約による支払回数は12回払いもしくは一括払いのみの受付となります。
4. 在留期限が申込日より27ヵ月を超える場合、支払い回数に関係なく割賦購入（あっせん)が可能です。

Which translates to:

1. If you're on a 90 days tourist visa, no soup (or iPhone) for you!
2. If you have less than 15 months left on your visa, you wont be able to make a contract, but they'll sell the phone to you without a plan for ￥80.000
3. Between 15 and 27 months left on your visa, you can either pay it cash for ￥80.000 or negociate take a 12 months contract (instead of the normal 24) possibly at the discounted ￥20.000 price-tag, but whether the discount applies or not is not clear in the document
4. Over 27 months and you're clear, you can buy the phone like any native

With my 3 years visa expiring in 27 months and 24 days, I might hurry my purchase plans...

Note: the maximum length visa you can have (apart from being a permanent resident) is 3 years, so you'd better work on your timing or you might have to wait a very long time to get a phone

Update: as John points out in the comments, if you have a Japanese health insurance card or driver's licence accompanied by a utility bill to your name, then this should suffice and Softbank's people should not ask you for anything else. That'll help quite a bit.

So people have been lined up in front of the flagship Softbank shop in Omotesando since Monday, all reservations that were taken in the first days after announcement have been canceled and now my friend Jon tells me that he called the main Softbank shop in Kumagaya, Saitama-ken and they are having a raffle for what will probably be 5 measly units on Friday.

If you want to get an iPhone here in Japan, you'd better start tossing a lot of ５円 coins at the local shinto shrine to buff up on luck and scour the raffles every weekend arount the countryside as we all did 2 years ago during the darkest times of Wii hunting.

Note: the photo is one of mine at Meiji shrine for New Year, that's the image that comes to mind when I think about a crowd in Japan...

Update: Jon won the lottery and got his iPhone, only problem is Softbank's servers are on their knees and they couldn't activate his phone. It's that crazy...