good cheap shipping company?

[kotatsuneko]

can anyone reccomend any that cover hokkaido?

been doing some research but not so many good prices quoted so far..

am mainly shipping educational material - which gets you a discount from customs

and clothes which naturally dont..

trying to sort this out sharpish so any good links / contact numbers would be very much appreciated!

[Taro Toporific]

am mainly shipping educational material - which gets you a discount from customs

One word: "M-BAG"

No tax on educational material via the 30kg "M-Bag". Go to the counter at the a MAJOR Japanese post office and ask for an "M-Bag". If they look at you like your from another planet, try going to the larger post office.

An M-Bag is a fairly big, heavy duty canvas bag with a drawstring. You can stuff it absolutely full of books, EDUCATION MATERIAL, and software counts as "printed matter". It's big enough to put a dead wife into, if need be.

I have friends in the States that ship me used books this way for next to nothing and I send them used Japanese study books which they sell for double the new retail price in Japan.

I recommend putting materials in a box, then putting the box inside the bag. The M-Bag will ship over in about 4-6 weeks, and the rate is significantly lower than mailing the books by any other means...less than 4,000yen.

M-Bag Shipment: When shipped in an M-Bag, the books are packed with an address label. The box is then placed in a separate mail bag addressed to the addressee on a tag attached to the bag. The postage is the same if the box weights anywhere between 4 and 11 pounds and then increases with weights beyond 11 pounds. M-Bags may be either standard (surface mail) or Air Mail M-Bags. Minimum weight M-Bag (less than 11 pounds) varies from $12. (Surface M-Bag to England) to $40.

[kotatsuneko]

CHEERS Taro! will look into this! very very kind of you!!

[kotatsuneko]

anyone know a good cheap shipping company for non book stuff like clothes personal effects etc? got a good 4 boxes to get rid of asap so we can take it easy b4 tokyo..

maybe Taro dono could work his magic rolladex? =^^=

[Taro Toporific]

anyone know a good cheap shipping company for non book stuff like clothes personal effects etc? got a good 4 boxes to get rid of asap so we can take it easy b4 tokyo..

maybe Taro dono could work his magic rolladex? =^^=

Call your airline and ask about "excess luggage" and "non-accompanied luggage" charges. Some airlines, especially 3rd-world ones like Thai Air, Philippine Airlines, Delta, make this dirt cheap as a service to all their returning nationals. Delta shipped five 20kg boxes of my "non-accompanied luggage" for $40. It won't hurt to ask 'em and the charming Japanese agents on the phone will offer you other cheaper options (since they get this question 20 times a day).

[Big Booger]

I tried to send a pair of skis as non accompanied luggage.. $250.00... They are still in my apartment.

[kotatsuneko]

am flying with ana then virgin, i imagine the prices wont be quite so cheap , but good idea and will look into it! chEErs ^^

kuro neko et al are quoting like £150 per box!

gonna try and get hold of nihon inter service in london tonight used them going from uk to japan and they were fast and not badly priced.. so i hope they are still in biz!

[Taro Toporific]

I tried to send a pair of skis as non accompanied luggage.. $250.00... They are still in my apartment.

I brought a 4.5 meter sea kayak to Japan for free as luggage. It always pays to ask (twice, looking for the right person to social engineer). :P

[kotatsuneko]

so far most shipping cos have actually said that the post office is a cheaper option, so when we get our mbags sorted will look into that..

great fun with the m bag btw..! thats the intnl name, will post the term the j post office uses later..

you can only use the service at major post offices, and as mr T said, you can put boxes in them, actually the postie asks you to do so

the twist is.. you have to bring the box/es to the post office to put in the mbag and pay

but if you were sending clothes etc then the post office could come and collect!

had some right millitant old bastad on the phone, great guy really, gave his superior a good earfull as he didnt see the sense in that either , but his boss wouldnt budge..

will price things up tomorrow..

this is all of course in hokkaido so it may be a lot easier in honshu..

gEts 60cm of snow and rising since yesterday

[Taro Toporific]

so far most shipping cos have actually said that the post office is a cheaper option.... the twist is.. you have to bring the box/es to the post office to put in the mbag and pay....

Now for Taro's super-secret:

You can stick a few non-book items into the M-Bag boxes. I mix up to 25% non-book items such as clothes in with the books, and nobody is the wiser or cares. The deal is Customs may check the box, but they don't rat you out if they find non-book items in with the books. The Post Office doesn't check the contents of the boxes going into the M-Box] Item Integration M-Bag Method(tm)[/i]. As with all gray legal areas, "Your Mileage May Vary", " toppings are extra", :limited while supplies last", blah, blah, blah...

[kotatsuneko]

hey again *mr T*

the j posties up here keep going on about "bulk mail" the mention of "m bag" seems to drive them into a frenzy of bulk bulk bulk! stuckisms!

is that just the j posties name for m bag? it certainly seems like it.. i hope they arent getting their fundoshi in a twist and making a mistake..

was thinking of doing the same thing re putting some clothes in as well..

kuro neko said not to put too many different things in their boxes if labled as one type of goods due to "terro" ! "terro no mondai aru ne gaijin san!"

not as if i`d put in any of those exploding gameboys... =^^=

thanks again for ya help man..

one shipping company said that japan was the most expensive country to ship out of, when asked why the price was around 3x that of shipping from london to japan a long sucking of teeth ensued and a good ol "nippon wa takai ne...." popped out

[Big Booger]

Back in the states you can do the sack rate, which is a lot like mbag, except you can put anything in the sack up to 60 pounds (27Kg) for 99 bucks I used that quite a bit when I came over here. It was the cheapest way I knew of at the time.

[kotatsuneko]

hmm almost 2 months now and no mbag boxes have arrived.. made a call to the office they were sent from and was told it can take ""from 3-6 months sometimes a year to arrive"

can this possibly be true? i certainly hope not.. don`t suppose theres any way of tracking a shipment? bloke on the phone said they don`t issue numbers on mbags etc so its looking a little shaky at the moment.. 3 other boxes we shipped over for around 2000 en more at the same time arrived 2 weeks ago..

[Taro Toporific]

hmm almost 2 months now and no mbag boxes have arrived.. made a call to the office they were sent from and was told it can take ""from 3-6 months sometimes a year to arrive"?

What can I say...you do live at the most distant point from Japan on Earth don't ya? Japan Post actually may have sent it by space-available tramp steamer via Hong Kong.

The "from 3-6 months sometimes a year to arrive" seems a bit much. The worst "warning" I've received was '3-4 months'. I do this with Japanese books once or twice a year: M-bag to the US is 6 weeks or less (the fastest was 10 days). In my 30 or so M-bag shipments over 20 years I have never have been ripped off, but ....

If it makes you feel any better, I am SURE it wasn't ripped off by anyone in Japan Post.

[kotatsuneko]

hey hey =^^=

the m bags arrived on monday morning!

*sorry if this is very boring, but it may help someone else, i dunno*

just like the bloke @ the sapporo post office said, they were indeed on the same ship as the boxes that arrived weeks earlier (which we sent via standard surface rates).

as the m bag service doesnt come with tracking (no barcodes etc) customs/the post office/parcelforce over here were unable to help

i think the problem was down to this:

in the uk, the maximum weight the post office will carry is 11 kilos in their vans

as the japanese post office sends m bags up to 20/30 kilos in weight, via surface mail, it isnt aware of the uk post office weight limitations via standard post.

as the boxes we sent were around 20/25 kilos each, i think that they were probably left in a depot until royal mail / parcelforce stopped arguing about who was going to deliver them

the boxes were simply labled "printed matter, surface mail" by the sapporo post office.

so yeah, they got here eventually, and a huge CHEERS! to Taro for the info/advice in the first place, as this saved us a bit of money..

but if anyone else is planning to send books via m bag to blighty at least, my advice is to pay the 1000 or 2000 en extra if you want your stuff to arrive promptly (the boxes we sent via standard surface mail that were around 10 kilos apiece arrived via parcelforce courier 3 days or so after the ship docked) m bag may be a much better solution for other countries closer to japan, with more modern postal systems than the uk, and the system does work for Taro so this is just my experience

[NeoNecroNomiCron]

I am in the same situation now. But I cant find a post office handy that even know what a m bag is... Also I am not really a student anymore [nor do i teach english] I was checking the prices online

http://www.post.japanpost.jp/english/fee/intel/sal.html

it doesnt seem all that cheap for non students.

[Taro Toporific]

I am in the same situation now. But I cant find a post office handy that even know what a m bag is...

it doesnt seem all that cheap for non students.

Always try your DISTRICT post office if the local doesn't know. I've nver been asked about the "student" rate but you can claim you you want to (the post office never checks your ID or the contents of the M-Bag).

I shipped an M-Bag fromn the States during GW and discovered a new "trick". The standard duffle bag-sized M-Bag is not the only size offered. There is also an M-Bag size 2 that only holds about 5 kg and an M-Bag size 3 that holds about 12 kg. These smaller sizes are useful if you don't need an M-Bag that can hold a dead girlfriend.

[daisyQ]

hey, just wanted to say thanks for the m-bag info. it was just the info i was looking for, as im planning on shipping a shitload of stuff - esp. books - to the states next march.

quick question -- can i include notebooks/files/basically PAPERS (not books) in the m-bags? i need to keep a lot of my teaching supplies and id like to include them in the bags.

cheers

[Taro Toporific]

hey, just wanted to say thanks for the m-bag info
quick question -- can i include notebooks/files/basically PAPERS (not books) in the m-bags? i need to keep a lot of my teaching supplies and id like to include them in the bags.

YES! For the past 20 years I'm been sneaking a few non-book items in every M-bag I've sent.
Please note xerox copies and laser printed stuff is legal ... and a few handwritten papers are ok since nobody checks.

[daisyQ]

superduper, thanks!

now if i can only figure out the best way to pack and ship all the pottery ive collected...!

[kotatsuneko]

i got away with a multi region dvd player and a rice cooker as well as books