I used the internet sparingly on my phone when I was in Japan, but that's because the data packets were so expensive. I used it to check the train schedules more than anything else. My phone wasn't fully internet-able (ie no real web browser), so I just used a handful of sites I knew were optimized for cell phone (optimized sites = smaller files = cheaper to access on a data plan).
I now have an iphone with an unlimited data plan, and I use it more than my laptop to access the internet, though I'm no longer living in Japan.
What do you mean by "foreign language service"?