An American iPhone in Japan

By David McKenna

I have just returned from a ten-day family trip to Japan in which I brought an Apple iPhone along and want to share my experience. I purchased my 8GB iPhone as a “laptop replacement” so that we could travel as light as possible. The primary role of our iPhone was as a casual Internet and email device. The secondary role was as an entertainment device for my children while on the airplane. (You can run out of things to pass the time for a three year old and a six year old during a twelve-hour flight from New York to Tokyo.) I believe that the iPhone was very successful in accomplishing both of these roles.

Before we left the house for JFK Airport, I bought the first season of the “Sponge Bob Square Pants” cartoon from the iTunes Music Store for the kids and synced it to the iPhone. I figured that this would give my daughter and son ten-hours of video that they both like.

After we got to the gate at JFK, my wife and I did a final check of email and the Internet using EDGE Wi-Fi. I also started to take a few photos at JFK with the iPhone’s camera to get a better feel of it quality. My preliminary reaction was that, for a phone camera, the picture quality is very good, but it appears that a lot depends on the lighting the photos are taken in. After my mini photo shoot, I switched the iPhone to “Airplane Mode” so that it could be used later on the plane safely and then shut it off to save power.

A few hours after take off, I turned the iPhone on and the kids watched a couple of hours of Sponge Bob while sharing the ear buds before they fell asleep. My six year old son quickly became proficient in navigating the iPod features of the iPhone to watch the different Sponge Bob episodes.

After the kids were asleep, I started to use the Notes app to write down highlights concerning the iPhone’s use on our trip (which I used to write this story) and to make a list of presents to bring back to the United States for my friends. After about half an hour, I turned off the iPhone again to save power.

After we landed in Tokyo Narita International Airport and got off of the plane, I turned on the iPhone and turned off Airplane Mode to see if I could pick up any Wi-Fi networks. Narita had a paid Internet Wi-Fi service available, but since we were not going to stay in the airport long, I did not think that it would be worth trying it. The paid Wi-Fi web page as displayed in Safari was mostly in Japanese (naturally), but did have an English area up to the top right of the page.

As expected, the iPhone said “No Service” where you normally see the strength bars and the AT&T name at the top of the screen. Also, the time was still U.S. Eastern Time, but was easily set to Japan Time by turning off “Set Automatically” in the Date & Time area of the General Settings and then setting the time manually.

To recover from the long flight, we stayed our first night at the Hotel Nikko Narita very close to Narita Airport. The hotel offered free Wi-Fi, but only in the lobby. As soon as I connected to the Wi-Fi in the lobby, my .Mac email came pouring in to the Mail app and I could easily browse my favorite Web sites. As an Army Reserve officer, I was relieved that I could still log into my Army AKO email account in Safari as well. I wrote a few quick emails responses from my various accounts and they were all sent with no problem. It was interesting to note that Google in Safari defaulted to the Japanese site even though it was the U.S. URL, but I could still navigate to my customized U.S. site with the “Google.com in English” link.

The next day, just before we checked out of the Narita Nikko Hotel, I used the Maps app to display our next stop, Tokyo Disneyland. The maps and satellite images gave great detail of the theme park, but only in Japanese. Evidently the maps are pulled from Google Japan’s Web site. While the maps were not an issue for me since I can read Japanese, this would render the Maps app unusable for non-Japanese language users in Japan.

We took a “Limousine Bus” on the Higashi Kantoudo Expressway to head from Narita to our hotel next to Tokyo Disneyland. It was about an hour-long drive. Along the way the iPhone would periodically pick up one or two open Wi-Fi networks but either the signals were too weak or we were out of range faster than I could use the service.

It is important to note at this point the general lack of public Wi-Fi networks in Japan. Throughout the rest of our trip in Japan, while it was pretty common to find closed Wi-Fi networks, it was fairly rare to find paid Wi-Fi service (even in areas you would expect them such as hotels, train stations and domestic airports) and very rare to find an open Wi-Fi network. Fortunately we were able to find at least one useable Wi-Fi connection a day during our trip to keep up to date with our email and favorite Internet Web sites, it just took a little hunting with the iPhone to find them.

Concerning Wi-Fi, one item should be mandatory for traveling iPhone users: the portable Airport Express Base Station. For example, when we arrived at our hotel, the Sheraton near Tokyo Disneyland, we found that they did not have wireless service available in the rooms, but did have a LAN port in our room for free Internet connectivity. The Airport Express Base Station we brought along with us was very handy to get an Internet connection for our iPhone in this environment.

After we checked into our hotel, we went to Tokyo Disneyland until the park closed. During our time there, I occasionally checked for Wi-Fi on the iPhone but couldn’t find anything that guests could use. The maps and satellite photos of Tokyo Disneyland that I had looked at the in the Map app were still cached and came in handy while moving around the park. After our stay at Disneyland, we went to Haneda Airport in Tokyo to fly up to my wife’s hometown of Obihiro, Hokkaido. Surprisingly, I could not find Wi-Fi available anywhere in Haneda Airport, but Obihiro Airport, a tiny airport, had paid Wi-Fi.

After we arrived in Obihiro at our family’s home, we plugged the Airport Express Base Station into their home network so that we had wireless service available to us in the house. This worked out really well.

While in Obihiro, my wife and I dropped by the English school that we both worked at for a couple of years after we graduated college. The school is an all Mac environment and had “AirMac” (Airport’s name in Japan) wireless service in all of their buildings, so I could use the iPhone there freely.

Bringing the iPhone to the school was a huge hit. When I pulled out the iPhone from my pocket, everyone in the office immediately surrounded me. I gave a little five-minute demo of what it could do and everyone was amazed. All of them said that they would buy one as soon as it was available in Japan.

Evidently many people in Japan are following iPhone news closely. I would get a lot of stares when I was using the iPhone on the street in Japan. One poor fellow almost fell off of his bike staring at it. People obviously knew what they were looking at. Occasionally I would get the “are they selling iPhones in Japan now?” question. Everyone seemed disappointed when I told them no.

Obviously there is huge potential for iPhone in Japan. While I was there, I put some thought into what Apple would need to do to localize the iPhone for the Japanese market.

First and for most, the iPhone will need to use Japan’s 3G cellular network. Along with this, it will need a battery that can stand up to 3G cellular use. I do not think the built-in Wi-Fi would be necessary to include because of Japan’s 3G cellular network and the dearth of public Wi-Fi networks. There needs to be a very simple and clean way to enter Japanese text. (This is something I would love on the U.S. iPhone as well.) It would be wise to include some Japan specific “killer apps” such as a subway map/ train schedule app or a “Print Club” app based off of Photo Booth as well as a game or two. Finally, the iPhone should have a strap loop for a wrist strap. If Apple produces this kind of localized iPhone for Japan, I think they will have a smash hit.

We stayed in Obihiro for a week, went back down to Tokyo for two days and then flew back to the United States. My iPhone experience from Obihiro back to JFK Airport was basically the same as going over.

In summary, the iPhone that I brought to Japan was very successful in acting as a laptop replacement for casual Internet and email use as long as there was access to a Wi-Fi network. It also did a great job entertaining the kids during the periods of downtime during our trip. Other than the phone portion of the device (which we really did not have a need for), I could use all of the other features of the iPhone in Japan with no problem. I did not use a belt clip or carrier for the iPhone on our trip, I just carried it in one of my front pockets the whole time. The iPhone proved itself rugged and still looks in the same shape as when we left. I look forward to my next trip with my new traveling companion, the Apple iPhone.

David McKenna is a MacDailyNews reader who submitted this article in order to shed some light on using Apple’s iPhone abroad.