Oh, if you have a phone+SIM card from Bic, you get a number. You need a non-tourist visa for that one, though...which means you need the stamped gaijin card.
I never had issues with anyone being snobby about the number, but I was in a bigger city, so maybe I had it easy.
(My sad/funny story was that in order to cancel the recurring phone payment, I needed to receive a text message to the phone number I was cancelling. But I had left the country by that point, and the SIM didn't work for international SMS. So I was screwed. I just told my credit card company to reject the recurring billing, and thus I'm probably blackballed from all future SIM-card purchasing in Japan.)
I never had issues with anyone being snobby about the number, but I was in a bigger city, so maybe I had it easy.
(My sad/funny story was that in order to cancel the recurring phone payment, I needed to receive a text message to the phone number I was cancelling. But I had left the country by that point, and the SIM didn't work for international SMS. So I was screwed. I just told my credit card company to reject the recurring billing, and thus I'm probably blackballed from all future SIM-card purchasing in Japan.)