Recent shipping experiences JP to US?

7 comments

1. Send anything irreplaceable by plane, like high school year books with autographs. In either case, your treasures should make it fine, but shit does happen. I’ve sent and received boxes for years via surface and had no problem, but I know a lady who lost her yearbook and was very distraught.

2. Never had an issue, but if it’s paper goods like books, it might be a good idea to grab a pack of those large plastic mail bags from Daiso to seal them in and protect against moisture.

   I think each pack has five A3-sized bags?

3. No horror stories. Some paperwork beforehand, and it’s not cheap!

4. I’ve shipped a lot of things via surface mail and never had anyone complain. Just expect it to take around 3 months at least. You should waterproof items though just in case, for example put them in plastic bags/wrap/bubble wrap etc.

5. Take a look at the SAL option. It is a hybrid of surface and air.

6. Water proof paper work or books and wait three months. I recently sent a 8 kilogram package stateside last August and it arrived in November. I taped the package really well and the post office even insisted I use as much tape as I want. Tracking it was the most annoying as it doesn’t give anything new until it leaves Japan and then arrives stateside. And stateside it sat in New Jersey for nearly two weeks before finally shipping to its final destination.

7. Shipped a lot of things over the years. Never had any problems. Even surface mail packages made it safely.

   The only damage I ever encountered was sending a large box filled with heavy things. The corners were torn and a holes here and there. But I put them into groups of ziplock bags and then but all of those into a large net so that if a large enough hole did appear, the corner wouldn’t spill everything, nor would anything get wet with the ziplock bags.

   But this was pretty overkill because I was so worried.