Coming over to Japan

Hey everyone! I finally have a working internet connection, albeit an average one and some free time. Hence I’ll be reporting on my experience thus far.

Packing and Storing stuff
As I was going away for a year, I had to somewhat clean up my room. I guess it can be best told in pictures.

Before: What my room usually looks like

All the figure boxes stacked outside

Now, all the figure boxes tucked away in the storeroom

My room all nice and clean (and very bare)

My Little rant on packing
Looking back, it doesn’t seem like it deserves any mention, but I can assure you it was the most tedious, fustrating and most annoying thing I had to do. Considering what was needed and what wasn’t was incredibly hard. When shipping things, you had to weigh up the possibilities that you could buy it over at the place you are going to, how big (both in thems of physical size and weight - damn you volumemetric weight) and whether the stuff you are shipping would be adverse affected by less than optimal environmental conditions (shipping chocolate in a box to a place where it is in the middle of summer isn’t exactly the best of ideas).

I had ordered a 20kg boc from OCS *Overseas Courier Service) to ship over here, and it was a really small box. despite my best of efforts, I could only stuff in 18.5kg into that small box. Below is a picture of the box. I have added the churuyasan 2 doujin and a fate pencilboard for reference:

Check-in luggage as everyone well knows is 20kg, regardless of how many pieces you have. When you are moving to a country for a year, this limit becomes a nightmare. The problem is further worsened by the fact that you have to bring 2 pieces as you have to ship one off to the place you are staying at the airport and bring a smaller bag to the orientation. What most people don’t realise is how lucky the Americans have it when it comes to this. They are allowed 2 pieces of check in luggage (physical dimensions have a limit) and each piece has a 32kg limit. Yes, that’s right, Each piece has a 32kg limit!!!!

They really do have it easy, though I do smirk when I hear an American JET has to fly domestically to reach their prefecture where the standard 20kg limit applies.

I spent the last day making sure that the baggage wasn’t too much over this ‘limit’. As discovered in my previous travel to Japan late last year, you can kinda push the limit, but not too much - they really cannot be stuffed issuing paperwork for just a couple kilograms over. So more stress - taking things in and out, making sure it fit and again, making lots of hard decisions…. but it would all be futile….
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