Shipping stuff over from the US after having lived here for >6 months?

Hi all,

I'm wondering if anyone has been in my situation, or similar.

I've been here a bit over a year now, and finally decided to ship my personal stuff from the US over to Tokyo. It's all been sitting in a friend's house up until now.

Now, all the moving companies I've contacted at first say that's no problem, we can send packers to my friend's house in Chicago, pack everything up, ship it to you, and unpack it at your place. But then, it turns out that since I've "arrived" in Japan over six months ago, that my stuff can't qualify as "personal items" for duty-free shipping and they can't help me anymore.

At this point, I've given up on trying to ship my stuff as "personal"/duty free and am 100% willing to pay whatever import duties and taxes (apparently known as commodity shipping), but I still can't find a company willing to ship the items for me.

It seems all the personal-item moving companies can't handle commodity shipping, and all commodity shipping companies only deal with very large commercial shipments.

You might suggest to just re-purchase all the items from here instead, but most of them are expensive electronics that go for 3/4/5x the price here in Japan, if I can find them at all.

It seems that short of me flying to the US myself, packing everything up, and dropping it off at a FedEx, there are no companies that provide such a service?

I really hope that I'm wrong here, and that someone else may provide some insight. Surely, I can't be the only person to ever have stuff shipped over after being here for more than six months?

Thanks in advance.