Operating outside my home country

[harrygatto]

I have a full UK licence but because I live in Japan I cannot get on the air. Although Japan has reciprocal licencing agreements with many countries it does not have such an agreement with the UK and, I cannot go through the procedures to get a Japanese licence because that is only available to Japanese nationals.
Can I approach a UK D-Star repeater manager and ask to join the network using a DV dongle with my PC?
Thanks.
David G4GOH

[harrygatto]

Well, no problems so far.
I contacted the UK licensing authority who said, no RF - no problem.
I registered with a UK D-Star repeater and ordered a DV dongle which arrived from the UK 4 days later. (Why from the UK? Well, the pound is way down against the Yen so that helped and secondly, HRO ("We specialize in customer service. YOU are our business!") has to be the most customer un-friendly company I have ever had the misfortune to try to do business with).
Dongle is installed and working, a couple of QSOs already and lots of listening to try and fully understand the technology.
David G4GOH