I'm nearing Year Six here in Japan

[chronovore]

I've been gone long enough that some of the basic operations expenses of living in the USA have changed and I can't really visualize them. Can someone fill me in on the status of common monthly entertainment and communication expenditures? Whenever I think about what people are paying in the USA, I always picture some massive heap of bills being paid just for regular stuff.

Here's what I picture:

• Cable/Satellite TV reception
• Internet provider (may be bundled with Cable)
• Phone/VOIP/Cellphone
  
• Tivo monthly charge (may be bundled with Cable/Satellite, if set-top box is installed
• NetFlix / Blockbuster and/or GameFly
• Xbox Live
  
• MMORPG fees, such as World of Warcraft, Everquest, etc.
• Satellite radio, or Rhapsody / Launch
  

When I look at that, I see a couple hundred bucks, every month, going out into the ether. I can't fathom it. Some of it's unavoidable, but some of it appears redundant. Is it?

While I'm asking, is it common for people to have their home phone line served through their internet provider? Or are people switching to mainly cellphone service now?

My wife and I both have cellphones; if my cellphone wasn't paid for by my work (and therefore not really mine), I think we'd ditch the home land line and just go all-cellular.

FWIW: When I last was in the USA, the cable in my area was delivered over TWO separate coaxial cables, and required a manual A/B switchbox on top of the machine to access each discrete line. If you wanted to VHS record anything, you had to make sure that the switchbox was on the correct setting for that particular channel and program. The last time I visited the USA, my sister was playing music through radio stations delivered through her cable service, and played through their home theater setup; direct service radio is still commonly used in Japan, and costs people about 7000 yen a month. Yikes! I've been trying to get some people to switch to internet radio.

Comments

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

No landline? Do you miss it?
Why is your cell bill so high if you're not using it?

Media budget: Far be it from me to complain, since I get so many of your hand-me-downs (Thanks, as always!) - though is this the trimmed down version of you budget, or are you in relapse? How much of it is music?

[epiphaniesrus.livejournal.com]

The cell bill is always high because like every other data util, most cell phone companies make you pre-purchase your usage estimate and fail to credit you if you're under, but ream you with full-on cackling if you go over. super_nyanko and I had several months where some personal event happened that caused us to be on the cell phone more than we considered "normal," and she went over the number of plan minutes by 100-200. It cost us at an extra $150-200 each time.

So very similarly to a protection racket, you pay for more minutes than you think you'll ever use... just in case something unfortunate were to occur. An accident of some kind that, while tragic, could be prevented with a donation to the Verizonelli's.

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

Holy crap. I can't think of a single expense that would be acceptable to have go over by that much, especially for something trivial like speaking for an extra 200 minutes some month. It /does/ sound crooked.

However, I /do/ recall how long distance calling used to be billed in Japan; I once paid nearly a hundred bucks to have a fight with my ex-girlfriend.