Hi, I will be moving my family back to Boston from Tokyo at the end of August. I received an estimate from Nippon Express for what seemed like a very large amount - 1080,000 Yen for a sea shipment of 540 cubic feet and an additional 280,000 Yen for air shipment of 150 kg - items which we'll need immediately. Can anyone suggest another moving company with which they have had a good experience to get a second quote. Also, do these prices seem high or are they representative? The sea shipment charge seems expensive.
Thanks for any information,
Milan Singh Minsky

This is too late to help Milan, but if anyone else is interested, Duck Moving Co. offers excellent service.

I have used them twice and found the price and service to be the best around. Of the quotes I got this year, Duck were only two-thirds the price of Nippon Express!

When the agent comes to do an assessment in order to give a quote, always mention that you are having several quotes done. It seems to bring the price down considerably!

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Hi all,
I have a friend who will be moving to the U.S. in December. She has a lot of books and personal belongings she plans on taking with her. Can anyone recommend an economical way of sending the stuff?
Thanks, Lori
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The best way to send books is via M-bag. In this, you box the books and the boxes are placed into a large canvas sack with a special closure that is basically tossed onto a ship and sent to whereever.
The tossed part is important to note. The first time I sent my books (from Sendai to Oregon), no problem. But when I sent them from Oregon to Hokkaido and used boxes that held copier paper, when I got the sacks in Hokkaido, I opened them at the post office (they usually do this because they want to keep the sacks) and to my horror, found scraps of cardboard floating atop my books.

The M-Bag has a weight limit, so the boxes that go into the M-bag cannot exceed that total

There is an English pamphlet with explanations that is available at the major post offices.

cheers, joe

After a huge effort, we found someone who is shipping our stuff to Chicago for Y100,000 (for 2 meters cubed). I don't know exactly how long it will all take. The man who came in a van to pick up our 42 boxes didn't have the complete paperwork with him. But there wasn't time to get into an argument about it. I'll let you all know how it went (if the stuff arrived in one piece, how long it took, and what the additional charges on the US side were) once I know!

Mr. Takahashi was our pick-up person.
Japan Luggage Express Ltd.
Phone: 04-7148-0081 fax: 04-7147-4430
http://www.jluggage.com/

The prices quoted on the website are not door to door. Only door to port. There's also a toll-free number on the website.

Received this from a friend (Conor) today:

"Try Mike at XPS Tokyo. He is just about the cheapest around. He charged me half the price of everywhere else, when I was getting stuff from Tokyo port. Mike is a really useful guy to know. The website address for his company is: http://www.xpstokyo.com/index.html
They have a wide range of services and he also has port clearance, so deliveries to and from Tokyo or Yokohama port are possible."

My question about movung is clothes...best way just the post office?


Also, for large items, like a big electric piano, hard disk multi-track recorder, etc, where I do not have the original pacakaging, how do you pack it, or do any of these above companies like Duck do the packing?


Thanks

paul@arenson.org

Does anyone know the number or website for duck moving compnay please?

Apart from duck and Japan Luggage can anyone recommend any other good international shipping companies ?
Thank you.

For someone who's just shipping boxes, I find that the Post Office has the best service for the cheapest price. For 42 large-ish boxes I was getting quotes from freight companies ranging from Y200,000 to Y700,000...with plus this and plus that for extra fees.

The Post Office will do it for approximately Y130,000. Here's their parcel post link for international shipping rates
http://www.post.japanpost.jp/english/fee/intel/parcel.html

Best of all is the PO super service...it's one that I've used for years but doesn't seem to be so well known. The PO will come directly to the house, pick the boxes up, weigh them right there and you can pay at the front door. Finally all of the boxes are delivered to my house in Canada.

Which is much better service than that offered by the freight companies. They'll pick up here, charge extra for processing the Japanese Customs, but once the boxes land in your home country, you're expected to process Customs again and pick up your own boxes.

The Post Office does it all! Door-to-door for a lot less money and hassle.

Lea

hello peeps does anybody know a shipping company from australia that delivers to tokyo? or vice versa? the cheapest one pls. thank you

For those of you who are leaving Japan, we thank you for being a part of a great way of life!

We help people move to Japan and from Japan with the relocation process to finding great jobs in Japan or Hawaii.

If you need any help with any of the above mentioned, please contact me at Japanese-Experts.com and ask for Keiko Sato. Thanks and for those of you who are leaving Japan, we thank you for your contribution to our society.

Keiko...

Extra list of overseas moving companies
Thank you Anna Hamakoji
JISTEC for information...

http://www.jluggage.com/

http://www.shipmates.jp/

http://www2.nittsu.co.jp/rem/nhp/html/english/index.html

http://www.economovejapan.com/index.htm

http://www.ysmyokohama.com/ysmehp.html

http://www.hjcenter.ne.jp/yamato/yamato.htm

http://www.xpstokyo.com/index.html

I'm not sure this is the ideal place to post the following information, but I just noticed this company advertising home relocation and sayonara sale assistance. They claim that all their business endeavors (including sales of used furniture and "antiques") help fund a school in India. Might be a good one to put on the list; furniture moving starts at 7,000 yen.

www.quoz.biz

About QUOZ, they were recommended to me by a friend who had used them a few years ago but I would not recommend them. Even though I had informed the owner of QUOZ that my new apartment was on the 3rd floor with no elevator, the moving men demanded extra money when they arrived at the destination and saw the stairs. Luckily my husband stood his ground (I was overseas at the time) and refused to pay more than what we were quoted. Pretty brave considering all of our worldly possessions were in their truck! There were also a couple of items that were scratched in the moving process.