I’m moving back to Japan with family this month. I was thinking to take very minimal items with me, however, my husband wants to take tv unit, his garden tools and non-electric tools on shared container ship.
We have at least 50kg of books, but I’m not sure if it’s really worth sending them.
Could anyone advise me or tell me your experience regarding sending belongings to Japan with your own funding please?
by Prestigious_List2156
3 comments
If the choice is storage locker or taking them, take them. We went the storage locker route (kept some things in previous country with the idea to move it over later) and it is the millstone around my neck now.
I would not take furniture— you don’t know if it will fit your new living space. I wouldn’t take garden tools unless you know you have a garden and those tools will be useful.
Basically we got rid of as much as possible. Books switched to Kindle and decided that if we wanted to reread old favorites we could check out from the library for most of them (popular fiction, maintained a US Libby account) or buy on Amazon for kindle. Especially important as our new place doesn’t have as much room for things.
Most stuff these days is likely cheaper to buy again in Japan vs ship OR you may find that your lifestyle requires different types of things here. But whether it’s worth it depends on your move (are you getting a container anyway? Is work paying for it?) and specific situation (do you know the place you’re moving into?).
Is your move one-way, or temporary? Personally, I’d put different weights on the pros/cons of bringing stuff if I didn’t intend to leave vs. if I thought my stay was short-term. Given A/V differences between other countries and Japan, I wouldn’t bring TVs and the like. And anything utilitarian (like garden tools, non-electric tools, etc.) I imagine I’d be able to find in Japan if and when I needed it. That said, I’m researching a potential one-way move to Japan for retirement, and things like books, board games, toys, artwork/antiques and the like – things that I’ve collected over a lifetime – I intend to pay to ship.
We permanently moved to Japan and we brought four suitcases per person Plus four boxes we shipped later. One of those boxes since I am in the education field was school supplies and English books. For my job bringing that box of books was worth it. Since English books can be a little expensive here. But for my personal books I invested in a kobo e-reader, and I sold most of my books. In those boxes that we had our family ship over later those are more of my personal sentimental items more like pictures papers graduation photos stuff like that. You can ship over a lot if you have the money for it. Before I flew I even looked into having our stuff shipped over through Kuroneko Yamamoto. The price was expensive but not something I couldn’t afford but at the end we decided just to use the US postal service. However this was before tariffs and all of those things so maybe a service like that might be better depending on what your mailing.
Japan has a lot of tools in stores like super Viva home or Cainz. Those two are my favorite for home items. Maybe take a look at their websites before deciding what to do and see if you can rebuy it in Japan.
I’ll put the Yamato moving site this is from America but just so you can get an idea I think they have a nice website and they show their prices very well you can always call them if you have the service where you are and they’re very transparent and very helpful. Happy moving.
https://www.yamatoamerica.com/cs/en/international-moving/
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