Job Discussion Forums

[lajzar]

What's the best way to send large bulky items, such as your entire life, home?

[shmooj]

If you can hack doing all the packing yourself go with the local post office.

Visit
http://www.post.japanpost.jp/english/
for the lowdown

and you can even phone English helplines listed here:
http://www.post.japanpost.jp/english/contactus.html

once you have packed everything and ask them to phone your local post office to come round and collect them for you for free within 24 hours. If you have more than ten boxes you get a discount.

We have just sent our life to Korea (can you hear the echo of my keyboard in my empty apartment) and used the post office.

The only plus point I can see with using a private shipping company (and it is hardly a great selling point) is that they will pack stuff for you. But for the prices I was quoted, I was expecting them to actually carry it over there by hand - ridiculous. Example, to ship surface to Korea the volume of a oshiire (Japanese cupboard in the wall the width of one sliding door) (about 4m cubed) they wanted to charge us US$2000. I shipped approx 420kgs to Korea and the post office charged me about US$1100. In terms of volume, I'd say we were talking about 12m cubed.

So, take your choice...

[carmenz]

Sea mail at the post office is said to be the cheapest. But packages take about two months to reach your house. Not a big deal if you are traveling for that amount of time before reaching your final destination. I sent boxes this way and they all turned up and in good shape.

Check the post office before sending boxes, though, to double check weight and box dimension limits. They do have limits. Each box I sent cost me about 8-10,000 Yen. But they were heavy and the largest boxes I could send.

[shmooj]