Options for sending a message while on a Shinkansen

3/6/2014 6:51:51 AM

If you only need to inform the person of what Shinkansen you are on (the train’s number), it will be written on the platform before you leave so you can send it then and not worry about it on the train.

The person awaiting your arrival can look up the arrival time if they have the train number.

2/17/2014 11:01:38 AM

You’ve got three options:

  1. The JR West free wifi service at the stations seems like your best
    shot, as far as I can tell you can surf the Internet freely once
    you’ve got it set up.

  2. You can also sort out Internet access on the train itself, but it’s
    a bit of a pain. First, you need to sign up for a Wi2 300
    account    , ¥380/month, which gets you access to the UQ network. Then
    you need to activate the Shinkansen add-on to your Wi2 account,
    which is charged at ¥150/3 hours. Beware that a) you’ll need to
    beg, borrow or steal someone’s Japanese mobile phone to get this
    activated, although once set up you shouldn’t need this anymore, and
    b) Wifi is only available on the newest, shiniest N700/N700A
    Shinkansen models, although fortunately for you this is the most
    common (but not the only!) one used for (Tokyo-)Osaka-Fukuoka
    services.

  3. The last option is to kick it old-school and use pay phones
    (remember those?) on the train, since most Shinkansen are still
    equipped with these. These are unsurprisingly a bit of an
    endangered species in Japan as well, with the PDC cellular service
    most of them relied going off the air in 2012, but if I’m parsing
    the Japanese Wikipedia right, the phones on the San’yo
    Shinkansen were refitted to use VOIP over wifi in 2009 and should
    still work. Again, there may be some train model dependencies with this.

Credit:stackoverflow.com‘

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Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,I’m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

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