We're not missing the old "gamertag recovery" feature the cloud system replaced and upgraded, but any significant outage is certainly enough to make us think about keeping our saves backed up on a memory card in a safe place -- just in case.
Using the smartphone connection function, simply set up a compatible Toshiba FlashAir SDHC card with an internal wireless LAN to make a Wi-Fi connection.
The government wants to introduce an American-style green-card scheme, but it seems implausible that it would allow in enough foreign workers to make up for the demographic shortfall, even if they all learned Japanese: by some estimates that would require about 600, 000 immigrants a year.