In article >,
"Rona Y." > wrote:

> Or perhaps not so small for some...
>
> I am one of the (likely) few people here who actually has to pay to download
> Usenet. In Japan, telephone calls are not free and are charged in three
> minute increments. For some reason, Usenet is only available through
> relatively slow dial-up ISPs, so I have to pay telephone charges each time I
> download.

I would think that in a heavily industrialized nation such as Japan,
broadband Internet access would be common. Can you read newsgroups at a
public library with broadband access if signing up for it at home is
outside your budget? Even if you can't use Usenet directly via broadband,
which is hard to believe, there's always http://groups.google.com to get
your Usenet fix.