journal features
movie reviews
photo of the day

shipping from the US

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2010.01.19

Living in Japan, I have difficulty ordering things from the US. US vendors don't like to ship things to Japan, and they don't like Japanese credit cards.

Until now I've had two choices: have things forwarded to my family in Canada and then have them repackage/forward it to me (I'm currently asking my brother and his wife to do just that with some clothes for my son); find someone who will ship directly, and take my chances. It's riskier than it sounds on the face of it because shipping costs are very high and there is also import duty in Japan. And as I learned in my recent experience with ordering shoes online, once you've paid the duty you ain't getting it back without a monumental hassle.

I'm looking for an alternative. I've just come across a service that allows for the re-shipment of goods from the U.S.. It seems to be aimed at the American expat community, which makes sense. Kicking the tires a bit, I did a google search for the words 'myus.com' and 'scam'. It seems like they have quite a few detractors out there.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=myus+scam

Of course, you get what you search for with a loaded word like 'scam', so the results may be skewed. Still, I'd love to hear what anyone has to say on this service.

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot