Guide · Akihabara

eSIM, Pocket Wi-Fi or a SIM Card in Japan? What I Tell Guests Before They Fly

Disclosure: this page contains affiliate links. If you buy through them I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Every price, counter location and opening time below was read from the company's or the airport's own website on 21 September 2026.

Most visitors need nothing more than a data eSIM bought before they fly. Get a pocket Wi-Fi device instead if several of you want to share one connection, or a physical SIM card if your phone is carrier-locked or has no eSIM support. What you should not do is land with no plan and assume you will sort it out later in Akihabara — that is the one option that genuinely does not work.

I meet people at the Electric Town exit most weeks. The guests who arrive flustered are almost never the ones who chose the wrong option. They are the ones who chose nothing.

Do you even need mobile data in Japan?

Yes, in practice. Japan is easy to navigate with a map and close to impossible without one. Free Wi-Fi exists but the Japan National Tourism Organization's own guidance warns that "the signal on some of these free services can be patchy and slow", and that traditional ryokan and smaller minshuku accommodation often do not provide it at all.

JNTO does say that all the major airports — Narita, Haneda, Kansai, New Chitose, Centrair and Fukuoka — have free Wi-Fi in the terminals, and that most city hotels offer it. So you will not be cut off entirely. But the gaps are exactly where you need it most: on the street, between stations, and in the moment you are trying to find a person who is waiting for you.

JNTO's own recommendation, for guaranteed access and especially outside the cities, is to rent a pocket Wi-Fi device. I would soften that to "get one of the three options below", but the underlying point stands.

eSIM, pocket Wi-Fi or a physical SIM — which one should you get?

An eSIM if your phone supports it and is unlocked: it activates before you land and there is nothing to collect or return. Pocket Wi-Fi if two or more of you are travelling together, or if you want one bill and one connection. A physical SIM if your phone cannot take an eSIM, or is locked to your home carrier.

The honest split is that the eSIM wins on effort and the pocket Wi-Fi wins on groups. If there are four of you, four eSIMs cost four times as much and give you four things to configure; one rental device gives everyone the same connection and one thing to remember.

Where do you get each one, and what does it actually involve?

Sakura Mobile is the operator I point guests at, because all three products come from the same place and the pickup options are unusually broad: airport counters at Narita, Haneda, Kansai and Fukuoka, delivery to any hotel in Japan, delivery to a home address, or collection at post offices nationwide.

Their pocket Wi-Fi rents for 4 to 90 days, from ¥299 per day (¥329 including tax), with a seven-day plan listed at ¥9,900 and 10% off if you rent two or more devices. Their site describes the data as "unlimited" with "no cut-offs or extra charges". Devices are shipped so as to arrive "the night before your arrival", which is the detail that matters if you are having it sent to a hotel.

Returning it is the part people worry about and it is the easy part: everything goes back in the prepaid envelope that comes in the box, and you drop it in any Japan Post mailbox by midnight on the return date. No postage, no counter, no queue.

Their SIM cards run 4 to 93 days from ¥3,500 (¥3,850 including tax) and come in two tiers — a docomo-network plan capped at up to 3 GB per day, after which the site states "your speed will be limited to 1Mbps", and an au-network plan listed as unlimited high speed. There is nothing to send back: "simply dispose of the SIM card after use". Two or more cards get 10% off, the same as the devices.

For eSIMs there is more than one route. Sakura Mobile lists a travel eSIM from ¥1,250 (¥1,375 including tax), and Klook sells Japan eSIMs from several providers in one place, which is useful if you want to compare data allowances rather than take the first one you see. Klook's own FAQ says the eSIM installs from a QR code in your booking, or directly in their app, and warns you to "activate the eSIM on a stable connection" and not to leave the page while it is activating.

That last sentence is the whole trap, and it gets its own section below.

Will your phone actually take an eSIM?

Two separate things have to be true, and people check only the first. Your phone has to support eSIM — on iPhone that means an iPhone XS, XS Max, XR or later, per Apple's own documentation. And it has to be carrier-unlocked, which is a different question with a different answer.

Apple publishes the check, and it takes about ten seconds. Open Settings → General → About. If your iPhone is unlocked, Apple's support page says "No SIM Restrictions" will appear next to Carrier Lock. If it says anything else, your phone is tied to your home carrier.

This matters because a locked phone will often let you install a travel eSIM and then refuse to connect to a Japanese network with it. You have done everything right, the profile is sitting there, and you have no data. If the About screen does not say "No SIM Restrictions", contact your carrier about unlocking before you fly, or plan on pocket Wi-Fi instead — a rental device does not care what your phone is locked to.

Note also that Apple's regional variations are real: mainland China iPhone models differ. If you bought your phone there, check before you assume.

Where are the pickup counters at Narita and Haneda?

Both airports list them on their own sites. At Narita, the airport states that the mobile phone and Wi-Fi rental counters and the SIM-card sales counters "can only be found in areas before departure passport control" — meaning the public part of the terminal you walk into after you clear customs, not airside.

Narita has counters in all three terminals. Terminal 1 has the most: JAL ABC counters in the North and South Wings and the Central Building, plus J WiFi & Mobile, XCom Global, Telecomsquare, AnyFone, SoftBank Global Rental, Rakuten Mobile and GPA SIM vending machines. Most are listed as open 07:00–21:00, with some JAL ABC counters opening at 06:30 and closing an hour after the last flight. Terminal 2 has counters across B1F, 1F, 2F and 3F of the Main Building, including four GPA SIM vending machines on 2F before customs. Terminal 3 has J WiFi & Mobile on 1F (07:00–21:00) and a GPA SIM vending machine.

Haneda publishes counter-by-counter hours. Terminal 2's International Arrival Lobby on 2F has J WiFi & Mobile / GLOBAL WiFi from 05:45 to 23:00. Terminal 3's Arrival Lobby on 2F has a Mobile Center from 06:30 to 23:00 and an AnyFone Japan counter from 06:00 to 23:00. Terminal 1 has an AnyFone vending machine on B1F and a WiFiBOX on 2F, both 05:00–24:00.

If your flight lands outside those windows — and plenty of long-haul arrivals do — a counter is not a plan. That is the argument for sorting it before you fly.

Can you just buy a SIM in Akihabara when you get here?

No, and this is the most useful thing on this page. Akihabara is the electronics district, so it feels like the obvious place to solve a phone problem. I could not confirm a single shop there that sells a short-term prepaid SIM or eSIM to a visitor, and I looked at the operators' own pages rather than at travel blogs.

Here is what the companies' own sites actually say. Bic Camera AKIBA does have a SIM counter — their own locator lists it at 外神田4-1-1, open 10:00–19:00 — but it is a BIC SIM counter, which is a domestic MVNO contract service, and the page does not say it sells short-term tourist SIMs. Don Quijote's Maji Moba SIM page describes only standard domestic docomo-network plans, with no visitor product and no Akihabara counter listed. Yodobashi does list a prepaid SIM for visitors on their own online store, but I could not load anything confirming a staffed SIM counter inside the Akiba branch, so I will not tell you there is one.

So: the shops are there, the products mostly are not, and you would be spending tour time on it. Sort your data before you land, or at the airport. Then Akihabara can be Akihabara.

What actually goes wrong

The failure I see is always the same shape, and it is always a chain of two small things rather than one big one.

The eSIM you could not install. You planned to set it up on landing. Airport Wi-Fi was slow, the activation page warns you not to leave it, you left it, and now you are in the arrivals hall with a half-installed profile. Install it at home, on your own Wi-Fi, before you fly. The plan does not start running until you switch it on.

The locked phone nobody checked. Covered above. Ten seconds in Settings would have caught it.

The pocket Wi-Fi nobody charged. It is a second battery to manage, and when it dies everyone travelling with you goes offline at the same time. Charge it overnight like your phone.

The return that slipped. The envelope goes in a Japan Post mailbox by midnight on the return date. Do it the day before you fly, not on the way to the airport.

The plan that was "I'll use free Wi-Fi". It works in hotels and airports. It does not work on the street corner where you are trying to find me.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to give up my home phone number? Not with an eSIM. The travel eSIM handles data while your normal SIM or eSIM stays active for calls and texts, which is the whole point of dual SIM. With a physical SIM you take your home card out, so you lose the number for the duration unless you carry a second phone.

Is an eSIM or a physical SIM better for a two-week trip? For most people, the eSIM, because there is nothing to collect and nothing to return. The physical SIM becomes the better answer only when your phone cannot take an eSIM, or when the data allowance you want is cheaper on a card.

We are a family of four. Four eSIMs or one pocket Wi-Fi? One device, in nearly every case. It is one cost, one thing to configure and one connection everyone shares. The trade is that you have to stay near each other, which families usually are anyway.

Can I use my home carrier's international roaming instead? You can, and if your carrier includes Japan in a flat-rate travel add-on it may be the simplest option of all. Check the daily rate and the speed cap before you assume — some plans throttle hard after a small allowance.

Do I need data for the tour itself? Not once we have met. Before that, yes — the meeting point is a real place in a busy district and every guest who has struggled to find it was offline at the time.

What about calling a Japanese phone number? A data eSIM does not give you a Japanese number. If you need to phone a restaurant or a hotel, data plus an internet calling app covers most of it, and hotel front desks will call on your behalf.

The part of your trip that should be boring

Data is infrastructure. It should be decided once, at home, in ten minutes, and never thought about again. Everything on this page is in the short list I give guests before they arrive — the same list that covers insurance and where to leave a suitcase — at Yuuki's Japan Kit.

The related one people read next: where to store luggage in Akihabara, because arriving with a suitcase is the other thing that decides how your first day goes.

About the author. I am Yuuki, a Japanese teacher and Akihabara tour guide in Tokyo. I run small-group tours in English most weeks, rated 4.96★ on Airbnb, and I have watched over 1,500 anime series — which is how most of my guests find me. I have handed my own phone to a guest more than once so they could look up a train.

See the Akihabara anime tour →

Sources: Sakura Mobile, Pocket WiFi rental and SIM cards for travellers — rental periods, pickup and return methods, listed prices and data wording, read 21 September 2026; Narita International Airport, Mobile phone and Wi-Fi rental — counter locations and opening hours by terminal; Tokyo International Air Terminal (Haneda), Cellular phone rental — counter locations and opening hours by terminal; Apple, Use Dual SIM with two nano-SIM cards or an eSIM — supported iPhone models, and If your iPhone or iPad is locked to a carrier — the Settings → General → About check and the "No SIM Restrictions" wording; Klook, eSIM activation FAQ — QR-code installation and the "stable connection" warning; Japan National Tourism Organization, Wi-Fi and connectivity — airport and hotel coverage, and the caution on free hotspot quality; BIC SIM, counter locations — Bic Camera AKIBA counter address and hours; Don Quijote, Maji Moba SIM — plan line-up.