gunmajet.net

Well, cheapest way I've done is ground freight. Takes about 6 - 8 weeks. The other way I've heard but not done is sea freight, and it's by far the cheapest. You can rent out part of a container on one of those big ships, but it could take 6 - 8 months to get to you. You'd have to look into how to do it though, since I have no idea.

I checked the Japan Postal website and they listed Surface Mail as being the most economical but not most timely.
http://www.post.japanpost.jp/cgi-charge/result.php?lang=_en
A 10kg box would cost 6750 yen and take about 2 months to get to Vancouver (the site's default Canadian city.)
You can also ask if 船便 funabin (sea mail) is still available. That was the cheapest a while back.

Good luck with the packing!

Brooke Brown
GAJET Pres 2008/09

I've sent stuff via sea mail twice before from here. It's by far the cheapest by weight. In honesty, for sea mail, the weight of the item you're shipping is far less of a percentage of cost than is volume. Shipping a washlet sized box (both items I shipped were that size, although only one was a washlet) was about 5000 yen and took on average 10 weeks to arrive (one box to California, one to Washington state). If your stuff is compressible, dense and heavy it's the way to go.

If you are moving house and trying to ship something 1 cubic meter or more, Shipmates is one of the cheapest services of its kind. I believe they even have a discount for JETs if you are willing to do door-to-port service (rather than door-to-door). They tend to specialize in people actually moving house (transporting furniture and the like). However, according to the rep I called, it's cheapest to go via Post if you're shipping anything smaller. If you're interested, I can give you the contact info.

Is it possible to just ship a guitar in its case or do I need to package it in a ridiculously large cardboard box? Was planning to do this via JP Post but they said it needs to be in a box for international shipping. So here's my other question, anyone know where I can get an oddly shaped box to fit a guitar (plus case)?

I'm not being a smartass, but you should be able to get a guitar box at any music store that sells guitars. They usually get in the box, put them on display, then when someone buys it, they get a case with it. So they should have a lot of guitar boxes lying around.

There are music stores in both Keyaki Walk or Aeon Takasaki. There's also a music store right next to Lottoria (spelled right?) in Takasaki. And of course The Dustbowl http://66.249.89.132/translate_c?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.dustbowl.co.jp...

By the way, what kind of guitar do you have, I might be able to take it off your hands for you or know someone who will.