[Nyororin]

If you get a Japanese phone, you will need to pay out of pocket for the phone and pay a large surcharge for a short term service. Prepaid phones have really fallen to the wayside and are very hard to get these days - harder than a normal phone - as they were popular for crime and the like.

If you`re only going to be here for a month, quite honestly there is no way it would be worth it to jump through the hoops to get a very short period of service.

Rental looks expensive, but compared it is really not. All the cheap carrier deals are for year + contracts. If you aren`t going to be making too many calls, and just want something that people can contact you by - it`s really the way to go. Even a prepaid phone is going to put you back about the same amount - likely even more. (Example - 9800yen for the phone itself, 3000 for charge, and 3000 for setup fee) Not to mention that the prepaid models are complete and utter crap.

MMM says "used locally" - but there is no "local" for cell phones in Japan. There are three tiers for calls from a cell phone - same carrier cell phones, other carrier cell phones, and land lines. It doesn`t matter where in Japan the person you call is as the cell phone itself isn`t "local" to any area.