Home Sweet Home In Tokyo

I'm 5,200 miles and 17 hours from where I live in Silicon Valley, California, yet I feel strangely at home here in Tokyo.

Much of the reason has to do with technology, though it's also related to the fact that Silicon Valley is home to many Asians, Asian Americans and Asian restaurants, so I'm very comfortable around the people and the food.

But technology is playing a very important role in making me feel at home. I'm staying at the Palace Hotel - directly across the street from the old Imperial Palace, but there is nothing old about the technology in my room. Like a growing number of business hotels, the Palace offers optional broadband service. When I told the desk clerk I wanted broadband, he handed me a "broadband kit" with a Cisco DSL router and instructions to connect it to a phone jack in my room. The kit also had an Ethernet card to plug into a laptop.

I'm in Tokyo to speak at an international conference about children, mobile phones and the Internet.

Even though my room isn't large, I wanted to be able to use my computer from anywhere in it, so I brought along a wireless access point and set up my own WiFi network. I simply plugged my SOHOware NetBlaster access point into the Cisco router and, instantly, my laptop was able to access the Net not just from my room but from the hall as well. I suppose the person in the next room could share my connection if he or she had a PC with a wireless adapter.

I didn't need to bring the wireless access point with me last week when I stayed at the Wyndham Hotel near the Seattle Airport. That's because that hotel was already a "hot spot," meaning it had a wireless network that was set up by Boingo (www.boingo.com). That company, along with T-Mobile (www.t-mobile.com/hotspot), has "unwired" thousands of locations around the United States, including many coffee shops, hotels and airports. To use any of these services, your PC has to be equipped with a wireless adapter, which you can add for as little as $50. Many new laptops come with a built- in WiFi adapter.

Fast access to the Internet means that I am constantly in touch with friends, family and co-workers. Not only am I exchanging e-mail and instant messages, but also using it to send broadcast-quality audio segments to radio stations that I work with in the U.S. People listening might think I'm broadcasting from a radio studio instead of talking into a microphone plugged into my laptop PC. It's possible to upload audio files via a dial-up line but it's oh so slow. I can also update my Web site from here. You can listen to one of those segments and see a photo at www.pcanswer.com/japan.htm.

I'm also able to do electronic banking. That sure came in handy when an ATM machine here displayed my bank balance at home as 15,000 yen. That's only $125 - barely enough to cover a plate of sushi. It turns out that I had deposited checks into the wrong account but, thanks to the Internet and online banking, I was able to transfer the money from my hotel room. I've also been paying my bills (that arrive online via Paytrust) and, of course, keeping up with the news.

As if the Web isn't enough, the hotel, of course, gets CNN, BBC and other English language TV networks. The sun never sets on CNN, and American news is just a remote control away.

One of the biggest boons to feeling at home is the availability of cheap prepaid long distance cards. In just about every country I've visited, there are prepaid cards for sale, typically at airport vending machines, tobacco shops and convenience stores. The price of these cards varies greatly but typically costs about 10 cents to 25 cents a minute to call back to the U.S. They can also often be used for domestic calls within a country. Local calls from my hotel in Tokyo are cheap, but in the United Kingdom, it can cost up to a $1 a minute to make a local call from a hotel. So it's much cheaper to use a phone card, even if the call has to be routed through the United States.

On this trip, I'm carrying an MCI Long Distance card that I bought at Costco. The $20 card entitles me to 670 minutes within the U.S. (3 cents a minute) but allows me to call the U.S. from Japan at a reasonable 17 cents a minute. That's cheap enough to let me pick up the phone without having to mortgage my house, unlike what it cost to call home when I last visited Japan in the '80s.

As far as I can tell you can't get this MCI deal online, but the Web site for SAM'S CLUB (www.samsclub.com) has an almost identical deal from AT&T (search for "long distance" from the main page).

There's only one problem with all this feel-at-home technology. I'm in a very exciting and interesting city and, if I stay in my room plugged in, I'll miss seeing Tokyo on the one day I'm here before my meetings start. It's time to log off and see the town.

A syndicated technology columnist for nearly two decades, Larry Magid serves as on air Technology Analyst for CBS Radio News. His technology reports can be heard several times a week on the CBS Radio Network. Magid is the author of several books including "The Little PC Book."

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By Larry Magid