Landlines
With around 75% of all Japanese people owning a cell phone, one might expect landlines to be heading the way of the Dodo. Although the cell phone is king, landlines are still an important part of everyday life here, and even payphones are easy to find and use.
Japanese phone numbers usually look like this: (012)-345-6789, with the numbers in parentheses referring to the area code. The area code can vary in length from two to six digits; however, the phone number always has ten digits regardless of the length of the area code.
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Getting started
Your home or office's landline must be bought or rented. A new phone line costs around 35,000 yen, but you can buy secondhand phone lines for less. You'll also have to decide on a monthly service package, which will be a contract that will cost you more. Rented phone lines may not allow you to make international calls. Telephone lines are handled by NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone).
Landlines explained
Landlines are a more conventional calling system than cell phones, and virtually all homes and offices in Japan are hooked up to the country's nationwide network of telephone lines, run by NTT. Because all the landlines are run by one national company, the choices and prices do not vary nearly as much as with cell phones.
Dialing
For local calls, always just dial the number as it's written. If you are calling from a landline to another landline in the same area code, you can lose the area code, but you don't have to.
Expert tips
- Internet-based phone services (VoIP) are also widely available, and are a much more economical choice for domestic or international calling. VoIP services are offered with Internet services, like Yahoo's YahooBB and NTT's Hikari Denwa. With today's fast optical and cable internet services, it's now easy to get a phone without buying a traditional phone line.
Checklist
Directory of landline telephone companies
See also
Some content adapted from Wikipedia.org.
