I realize this should be obvious, but it didn’t occur to me until the last minute and it threw a small monkey wrench into our travel plans.
If you’re from the United States and you recently bought a phone under an installment plan, your phone is very likely “SIM locked,” meaning you cannot change carriers, until it is fully paid off. This practice isn’t as common in the EU nowadays, and most of the YouTube videos I’ve watched for tips on getting around Japan are made by European — particularly British — travelers, so when they advise using eSIMs to connect your phone to Japanese networks, they neglect to mention that this only works on unlocked phones.
I should have realized this already, I know. But because I was traveling to a country where my carrier doesn’t have service, I wrongly assumed I could add an eSIM specifically for that purpose.
That left three options:
1. Paying off our phones and unlocking them so we could use eSIMs.
2. Renting a pocket WiFi hotspot to carry around with us
3. Paying roaming fees (in our case, AT&T’s “International Day Pass”) to connect.
Option 1 was out for us because it can take 72 hours to unlock after you’ve paid the phone off, and I literally discovered this problem the day before we left. We have used both of the other options. Our experience with the pocket WiFi wasn’t great, and we ended up just paying for AT&T’s International Day Pass for three of our group (our youngest has an old unlocked hand-me-down phone with an eSIM). It’s more expensive but we should have just gone that route from the beginning.
So if you have a locked phone, don’t make my mistake; plan accordingly!
by GypsySage
