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Dialing Air Bases/Marine Bases in Japan with Skype
I came across an interesting problem tonight while trying to set up Skype to call my sister who recently moved to Okinawa Japan with her husband who is deployed to the Air Base there.
When dialing their phone number from a regular phone the requirement is 011 (signal international call) 81 (Country Code) 6117 xx xxxx where 6117 is the “base exchange”. This works fine, we had to do this before when they were deployed in Japan from ‘99 to ‘05.
Using this combo while dialing from Skype however, proved problematic. I kept getting a recorded Japanese operator message.
After much googling I found that there is some number translation going on in the phone switching equipment and indeed there was a way to bypass it.
Dialing using the following 81 (Country Code) 98 (Okinawa/Naha) City Code and the translated “base exchange number” to the outside phone switch number. In my case 633 became 959 and then xxxx.
I found the translation list here http://www.okinawahai.com/my_weblog/phones/ .
I’m not sure if the protocol for this might be the same for other international bases but hope this will be helpful for anyone trying to reach family overseas on the cheap.
As an aside, we’re lucky to be able to have http://www.nanpa.com/ which is pretty damn spiffy especially since its use was started in 1951 by Bellcore.
