Japan Wireless Pocket Wifi Rental and Review

 Earlier before dinner, we're at JR Kyoto Station for 

group photoshooting of Team I and Team II.

Knowing that Hotel Gravia is integrated part of Kyoto station,
we rushed to the hotel to collect parcel from Japan Wireless.

  The hotel receptionist checked and handed us the parcel

with this Instruction on how to connect to the router,...


Pocket Wifi Router, Portable Battery, Charger, Protective case,
and returned envelope to courier back.

For our Korea trips, WIFI was really important for us. Most of the time, we need to search  information such as for Google maps, hotel, flight information, checking e-mails, SNS and others apps are crucial for independent travelers.

So, it's actually not that necessary for this guided trip. Although hotels have Free Wifi, but we're not stationed there. Most of the time it's already late and tired when we reached hotel.

We wanted to call two kiddos at home as we missed them and felt sorry for not bringing them with us. And, it's nice if we can stay connected with my family and friends. We all know that international call is really expensive, and data roaming fee is also ridiculously costly. Maybe a call back to Singapore for few minutes equal to 5 days rental fee of pocket Wifi.

JPY 3,700 for 5 days unlimited data
(cheaper than last year rate by JPY 600).

The rental price is quite affordable. It's even cheaper if you share the cost to five to ten person. It's about SGD 1.50/day/person (based on 6 days rental sharing with 5 person).

So if you ask me is it necessary to rent Pocket Wifi in Japan? I think it's more prudent to rent it, especially if you are avid SNS user, or on business trip. 

Unlimited data usage means you can on it the whole day. We even let four of the team members to use our WIFI connections without worrying it might exceed data limit. Most of the time, we used apps like Skype, Kakao Talk, or Line to make the call and messaging. 

This aided me to write this Japan trip postings too, because I checked-in and updated my whereabouts. Else, by now I might not remember the name of the restaurants we visited.

How to rent Pocket Wifi?

You only need to go to their website, then select the select the device that suit your need and make payment. Do make sure you order it at least 3 days before your flight to Japan, 'Kiasu' us reserved it 3 weeks before our departure date. 

There's option to collect it at the airport or courier to your hotel. We opted to collect it at hotel because we're joining the tour. Not like in Korea, we can have our own sweet time to search for the collection booth, make deposit and sign necessary documents. It's alright to pay additional  JPY 500  and not asking the whole group to wait for us.   

I can say that the connection is pretty fast and stable. Only a bit lagging when 4 or 5 of us bombarded it simultaneously. As you know, the first thing when we stepped in the bus was to update our SNS. Posted lots of photos... It's real time, real place update hor~! 

The network coverage was pretty strong in the city and attraction spots, but sometimes it's no coverage when we're on the way from Kyoto to Osaka. I think it's still acceptable, because it also happen in Korea, our pocket wifi was totally disconnected when we're at rural areas in Yeongju and Muju Ski Resort.

At the end of our trip, we just asked a favor from receptionist of Imperial Hotel in Osaka to courier it back to Japan Wireless. You can courier it from the last city you visit, or just drop it at the airport postbox before you fly off. It's easy and convenience, right?