visitors since Jan. 20, 1999

My Missing List Japan updated frequently

My Japan Collection (544 kB),

explanation of the abbreviations
Last update: Apr. 22, 2002.
Cards contained: more than 4100
including most of my denden kosha cards, all of my 111, 230, 250, 251, 270, 271, 290, 310, 311, 330, 331 cards, and a few others.

My collection from other countries

Please contact me by email if you want to swap cards.

View my guestbook

Some information about the new IC telephone cards

Some curiosities in Japanese phonecards

Please email me, if you know of other curiosities, misprints, etc.

Intro to Japanese phonecards:

I am collecting mainly Japanese telephonecards and here is some information about them.
Typically they look like this:

frontviewbackview
Besides the front side, I am also very much interested in the information on the reverse side, because it helps me to catalogue and classify the cards.
You will recognize some numbers in the lower right corner.
backside detail
The first number is the value of the card, in this case 105 telephone units. This is also encoded by the three vertical bars. 50-unit cards have 2 bars.
The next number in the brackets is very informative. The first 3 digits encode the issuing NTT office.
number issuing office including the following prefectures
111 nation wide ---
230 or 231 Tokyo ---
250 or 251 Kanto Kanagawa.
270 or 271 Shin-etsu Niigata
290 or 291 Chuubu Gifu, Shizuoka, Mie
310 or 311 Hokuriku Fukui, Kanazawa.
330 or 331 Kansai Osaka, Kyoto.
350 or 351 Chuugoku Hiroshima, Yamaguchi
370 or 371 Shikoku .
390 or 391 Kyushu+Okinawa Fukuoka.
410 or 411 Tohoku Akita, Miyagi, Aomori
430 or 431 Hokkaido ---
The xy0- cards are older than the xy1- cards, with a few exeptions in the 330/331 series. The other three digits are running numbers, from -000 (in case of the xy0) or -001 upwards. Sometimes, there is a date below this number, too.
In this classification, the <110-0anynumber> cards are special.
These cards are sold as blanks to shops that print pictures on them, sometimesÅ@in very small quantities. Many company- and advertising cards have suchÅ@a 110 number.
Besides these, several other card types exist. Here I will introduce just two of them to you:

1. The so called free cards. Each motif has it's own number The two goemetric signs in front of the -110- mean 'free' in japanese. These cards are mostly commercial cards. They are sometimes produced in large quantities. There exist many different reverse sides, which are more or less similar.

2. The model cards. These are cards with a fixed background and it is possible to have a message printed on top of that background. Very often these cards are used by small private enterprizes for advertisement. Up to now there are around 1000 different model cards. The reverse side looks like this. The three characters in front of the 110 mean 'model' in japanese

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