Usually when I travel Japan, I rely on hotel WiFi, or seek out internet cafes to get online. After years of traveling like this, it became clear that I was wasting a lot of time… hotel WiFi was often slow, finding and then using an internet cafe ate up precious hours of travel time.
For my most recent trip, I tried out RentalWifi. For this review I used both their Standard Wifi (Y!mobile) and Premium Wifi (Docomo),for 30 days traveling all over Japan – from Nagasaki and the remote Yakushima in southern Japan, to Sendai in northern Japan.
Step 1: Choose a portable internet device (standard or premium)
Both the standard and premium devices have very fast internet access speeds, more than enough for a traveler. Besides cost, there are two main differences:
Speed – premium is rated at 150Mbps and standard is rated at 75Mbps. Anything above 25Mbps is very fast.
Coverage – the premium devices use Docomo, Japan’s biggest mobile operator, and covers more of the population than the standard device.

When choosing a device on the RentalWifi website, I strongly recommend the ¥500 insurance.
Step 2: Book (choose dates, enter hotel details, pay via PayPal)
Before booking, you will need to know the details of a hotel you will be staying at, as RentalWifi delivers the device to hotels.
There is a minimum rental period of 4 days.
Once you’ve gone through the order process, pay for your order. Once complete, you’ll receive an email confirmatio...