Are they making you sign up for a 2 year contract and then renewing that contract automatically for another 2 years if they don't hear from you? I think the break fee is about 9,500 Yen

Oh that's a good point. Yeah, I should mention that the contract will be renewed automatically without you telling then after 2 years. But I should call them to double check.

Again, I mentioned in the post that if you are not planning to spend more than 5,000 yen for data stream, I will not recommend to renew your contract.

For me, I'm spending 6000 yen every month.. because I am heavy iPhone user. And I'm going to live in Japan forever, so it was no brainer for me to renew.

OK I just called Softbank customer center and confirm about this.

Yes, they do auto-renew the contract for another two years.

And the window to cancel the contract without termination fee (9975 yen) is very narrow.

For example, I subscribe my Softbank contract yesterday (4/6/2009). And my billing cycle start on 11th day of every month.

So I can only cancel my contract from 4/11~5/10/2011 WITHOUT 9,975 yen.

But again, I'm saving 1500 yen every month because I'm maxing out the data plan every month. So even after the cancellation fee, I'm already saving a tons of money.