- I want to rent a phone while in Japan, I found a company that will charge
me $75 per week + $1.50 per min to the US and free incoming calls, do you
think that's reasonable?

I think it's complete insanity. Buy a used phone and a prepaid card when you
get there, you'll own the phone for less than the cost of one week's rental.
The going rate with discount cards is 3 cents a minute to the USA
(admittedly not including local airtime); you want to pay 50 (!!!) times
that much? Incoming calls are free anyway; that's nothing special.

Unfortunately, $1.50/min is considered not-so-high price for international
calls from Japan. $75 for a week is too expensive, though.
#We can buy a brand-new one if we pay $100!

And additionally, you can't get used phone with tourist visa.
Any phone company, with no exception, does require "certificate of foreign
citizen resistration" issued by city office where you "live" in Japan.
This is because there have been so many scams that employed prepaid-card
cellphones.

I recommend public phones if you want to call from Japan, and web-based
email (yahoo, hotmail, etc.) for contacting from US to you in Japan.

================================================== ======================
(Mr.) IIJIMA Hiromitsu,
aka Delmonta http://www.ht.sakura.ne.jp/~delmonta/