Jeeezus, I had forgotten about this. Applying for Internet service in Japan can sometimes be an incredibly time-consuming and labyrinthine process. Having just suffered through it again, I now remember having done this a few times before. What should be a simple process of filling out a web form with telephone assistance–choose this, put this info here, etc.–is made into an excruciatingly painful chore. I was on the phone with KDDI, talking to their reps for two hours and fifty minutes. That does not count the half hour I spent talking with their tech people before that or the twenty minutes after. As a result, I am now pretty sure that I have submitted an application, but I have no idea whether they gave me the right service or how it is going to work.

The building I am moving into is supposed to be equipped with the latest Internet capabilities; as you can see in the photo below, there are three LAN ports built into the wall, one modular phone jack, and a special direct fiber optic connector. But from what I gathered talking to the KDDI people, they will bypass all of that cool new techie stuff and give me the exact same old-style telephone-line connection that I presently have in my aging pre-fiber mansion in the sticks.

None of this makes sense. However, nobody seems to know anything about this. I tried asking the Vanguard Tower sales staff; they said to ask at the orientation. At the orientation, they said to ask the administrative office. At the administrative office, they said to call KDDI. And KDDI seems to know jack. They instead led me through the signup process, by the end of which I had not been told what speed our connection is nor how much we will be paying. I had to ask about those details, and only get the answer for the speed–and later was told that even that wasn’t right. So I am still not sure who was telling me the accurate information and who was not. I have signed up for service and I don’t know anything about it. Swell.

KDDI has to be given credit for one thing: they do try to provide full English-language service. They get it right with the tech support–they speak English pretty well. But in sales, for some reason they can’t hire English speakers and train them in how things work; instead, they hire translators. Bizarre–translators should cost more, and are certainly less efficient than direct communication–but that’s how they do it. And this time (like all the other times, actually), the process was glacial. Probably 80% of the stuff I could have done a lot faster by myself just in Japanese, but the other 20% would have made it all impossible. So we use the translator, and as a result, some issues that should have taken half a minute to resolve suddenly became twenty-minute chores. I sat there looking at what should have been a simple choice, ask a clear question–but then the translator for some reason chooses not to simply translate my question, but instead to repeat five minutes of backstory on my situation, and the sales person then launches into what seems to be a scripted spiel only tangentially connected to my question, which the translator then brings back to me–which does not answer the question I asked. So I ask again, emphasizing the simplicity and asking for the translator to simply ask the question, which half the time would result in a more direct questioning and answer, but not always. At other times, the sales clerk and translator would get tied up with irrelevant details, like would I be getting an NTT land line installed, when it was clearly not required, but they would refuse to move on until I committed to such an answer. This kind of thing happened time and time again, drawing the phone call out far too long. But KDDI can’t be singled out in regards to the difficulties in getting things set up; that seems to be an industry-wide problem.

After getting off from talking with the sales people, I got back on with the technical people and got some things straightened out. The biggest clarification was that we will probably be getting 100 Mbps speeds, despite the sales people saying that only 70 Mbps was available. One operator said that KDDI had not yet installed their equipment in the building, and another said they had. One said I had a choice of plans, another said I did not.

There are likely to be other problems associated with getting a connection, however. As is usually the case with these things, the ISP always insists that it will take three weeks or more between applying for service and getting it. Apparently, it could even be a bit longer in this case because the building is still new. And if that happens, then we might be without Internet service for any amount of time from days to weeks, even longer, in theory at least. During that time, our options are slim: either use dial-up or ADSL, and in either case we’d have to get NTT to activate the land line, which would lose all utility once the fiber optic connection was established. Again, there were conflicting reports; one operator said I could get ADSL on the fiber optic line, though it would be slow and unstable; another said I had to get the land line first. Even worse, they refused to let me sign up for KDDI’s ADSL, instead for some reason insisting that I go to NTT for the service, without clearly explaining why it would be necessary to deal with a second ISP.

But ADSL is not a great option in itself–after all, one has to wait three weeks or more for that to get started as well. Silly me, I just figured that KDDI would have other alternatives available, instead of effectively saying, “We’ll get you connected at some undetermined time, but until then your dark with no options.” I would have an option, though–use outside sources for the Internet. It’ll be just a ten-minute ride in to my school with their network, and there are Internet cafes everywhere in case the school is not open every weekend day.

Maybe someday, using the Internet in Japan will be as simple as choosing options from a menu and having the phone company switch them on more or less immediately. Maybe some places are already like that, though I doubt it. And this is not just a language problem–Sachi had similar travails getting her ADSL line started some months ago, with confused agents and conflicting information, and more. Bottom line is, these people just do not have their act together–and so wasted my entire afternoon on my day off when I could have been getting productive work done.