One of the best things about living in Japan, and specifically Tokyo is the excellent ADSL and broadband connectivity. After 2 years with ADSL at 1.5Mbs, I finally upgraded to 24Mbit, which costs me a mere 200 yen more per month (still coming in under 5000yen a month flat rate).
It meant buying a new modem, but also a new LAN router as my old one ran at only 10Mbit on the WAN side. I got an NTT MN3 modem, and a Linksys BEFSR41C-JP router. So far it’s excellent, and yes, you don’t get a regular 24Mbit connection, but it is a lot faster than the 1.5 which would top out on a good server at about 1Mbit. So far I’ve recorded over 3Mbit with US servers, so I’m pretty happy with it.