I have been doing my research about phone plans because I will be moving in a month and a half to Tokyo, from what I’ve seen Sakura and Mobal seem like the most common providers people chose when first coming to Japan before switch over to a major provider. What are the pros and cons of each phone provider and why do you prefer one over the other.
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**What is the better phone plan when arriving to Japan ?**
I have been doing my research about phone plans because I will be moving in a month and a half to Tokyo, from what I’ve seen Sakura and Mobal seem like the most common providers people chose when first coming to Japan before switch over to a major provider. What are the pros and cons of each phone provider and why do you prefer one of the other.
To whoever answers
Have a great day and thank you!
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I use a lot .. like a lot (160gb per month) of 4g/5g (mobile data), and for that, I recommend rakuten. Even though the quality is not that good (it depends on the place u are and the time u use it), it has unlimited mobile data! It’s 3200yen, but if u get rakuten points, you can sometimes pay, sometimes like 400 yen !
Mobal worked well for me but its a bit spensy
Heard Ahamo is pretty good, but I haven’t used it yet.
I used [GTN Mobile](https://gtn-mobile.com/) when I first came to Japan about five years ago. I was also using their sister company [Best Estate](https://www.best-estate.jp/en/) to rent my apartment, which made my life very easy: I knew my mobile phone number before I even got on the airplane thanks to their reservation system, and I was able to make one trip to their office to sign my rental paperwork and pick up my SIM card. Havig the phone number from day one also makes it easier to register your zairyu card at your city hall.
Just be very, very careful to make sure that the plan you select supports MNP (mobile number porting). In theory, all mobile providers in Japan have to support this now, however, for many years, GTN was selling SIM cards for _some_ of their plans that they claimed were not compatible with MNP. No MNP means no ability to take your number to another provider.
Looking at their website now, I think they may no longer have this problem, for instance, this plan says it is [MNP compatible](https://gtn-mobile.com/eazy/).
Mobal worked for me; gave me a real Japanese mobile number which allowed me to set up my bank account and so on. Used for about two weeks then switched to linemo as the unlimited data for video calls inside the Line App is awesome for staying connected to my family back home.