I just met an old friend today who is now working for a software company here. Babar had some encouraging news about the state of connectivity and the software industry in general. Right now, the only internet access I have is through these dialup cards which you scratch to find out the login ID and password. They seem quite reliable, except that you may get disconnected once in 2 hours or so or when the card expires.
But there are better solutions, though much more expensive than Japan. A 64kbps dedicated DSL line costs around Rs.6,000-7,000 (~13,000 yen) while something like 1Mbps is at least 4 times that. I’ll have to check if these include a static global IP.