Many of us will stay in touch with others from China and Japan via email. It's cheaper and , given the time difference and phone card hassles, much easier. Most internet cafes are cheap and they are readily located. In some cases, bargains exist right within our hotels.
Please be sure that you set up at least one email account using a free service. This will enable you to easily communicate with family and friends from the road. Many of these will permit you to read your pop3 mail (e.g., your district or other account) as well (you'll need to set this up in advance as you'll need to know your server address).
I have used Yahoo mail for years and find that it works quite well. Features include spell checking, effective spam filtering, and automatic virus scanning.
http://www.my.yahoo.com
Google mail is also excellent (click here), but you may need someone who already has it to "invite" you to sign up.
Hotmail is Microsoft's offering (http://www.hotmail.com).
Others:
Excite
FastMail
Advanced
If you are setting up a Yahoo or Google account, you can also add UCLA Asia Institute and other news to your My Yahoo or Google homepage.
For Yahoo here's what you add under "rss feed": http://add.my.yahoo.com/rss?url=http://www.international.ucla.edu/asia/rss/rss.asp
For Google here's the rss feed: http://international.ucla.edu/asia/rss/rss.asp
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