COMPUTERS, TELEPHONE, TV

Our computers worked just fine. We were able to use our accounts back home, pay bills, etc.

One thing you CANNOT do whilst in Japan: watch American TV shows online.
* You get a nice little message that says you're out of country, and therefore you're not allowed to watch them.

I think it would be due to copyright, and distributorship. Theoretically, a Japan TV channel could buy that show to broadcast over here. You are living in that area, so you are at the mercy of what is on the local TV.**

We buy TV shows off of iTunes, and have Apple TV that works well. For the short term, buy a really good laptop! So far, all of our hotel, 1-room apartment, and house experiences have had high-speed internet. Hey, it's a perk to Japan!

We use ichat and Skype (free to sign up) to talk to friends and relatives back home. It sucks if their internet connections and cameras are poor, but it will work.

There are internet phone systems out there, we use Vonage. For a nominal fee each month, you can have ready access to a phone line back home to talk with friends and catch up. They give you a small box that you plug into the internet (literally, that's it). When I pick up my phone, there is a short pause to get dial tone, and then it's a local call to my friends back home. They can call me, too, at a local to Bremerton number. There sometimes is a slight delay or echo. But, I have lived abroad back in the 'long distance call' days, and this is cheaper, easier, and my friends use it to call me, as well. We live in the age of global access, and this is a wondrous invention and service.

*When I went home this summer, there were quite a few nights I caught up on my TV shows online!

**J:COM, our cable company has Discovery TV, (most are in English, with Japanese subtitling), History TV, Mystery TV (most American, but you get some French and German fare), AXN (lots of goodies, some just old seasons of stuff, but hey!), the FOX shows are more racy than the American stuff, MOOBEE (Movie channel) one is dubbed, another usually in English, there's a Japan CNN which is in English, more world news. There are lots of kids shows, in Japanese.

If you have kids, bring some DVDs. I don't know if the places will be set up for playing DVDs, or American DVDs for that matter. When we TDYed here and SD, we took a small DVD player/TV for our son that you could connect into TVs. So, we could always amuse him with our small case of 20 DVDs.

Buy DVDs on base. Even though Japan is NTSC, they have a different country code 'encryption' for their DVDs. Again, it's a licensing, release date type of thing.

Don't know what the set-up will be at the places you're staying.