Just this past week I spent my Friday at work helping out our newest Assistant Language Teacher (ALT for short), who had come from Vancouver already knowledgeable about phones in Japan.
Or so he thought.
Now, it's not his fault. He did his homework, researched the different phone companies, what they offer, etc., and had come to Japan feeling very confident that he would have no problems getting a SIM card for his LG phone and using it with a Japanese service plan. The company he chose apparently offer this kind of service (the others may not), and as he gleefully handed over his brand-new phone, the desk clerk cheerfully said, "I'm sorry, this doesn't have a giteki mark."
A "giteki" mark? What's a "giteki" mark?
A giteki mark is a mark of Certification of Conformance to Technical Standards.
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| It looks like this. |
Without it, you may not lawfully receive a SIM card for use in Japan. It's actually against the law. Not just selling a SIM card; just knowingly purchasing another phone for the purposes of recycling the SIM card into a new phone is against the law without this little guy.
If you've purchased your phone in Japan, the symbol is almost certainly there (unless it's from a shady, black-market phone dealer?) Our new ALT had purchased his phone in Thailand. If there is a giteki mark on his phone, it's within the phone's data and can only be displayed by knowing the correct buttons to push (the clerk helpfully suggested this possibility). However, it's not under the battery or anywhere along the back of the phone, where it normally would be, and so they could not offer him a SIM card.
He ended up getting an iPhone 5c, instead.
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