Going Postal - A Comparison

The other week, I had two boxes to ship out. One to my stateside nephew for his birthday and one to a friend here in Japan for her soon-to-be-here baby boy. Now I rarely use the Japanese postal system for more than sending a handful of New Years or thank you cards, so I had no prior knowledge of how that shipment would go. I figured it would be expensive, possibly even close to 5,000 yen (about $56 American dollars at today’s in-the-toilet exchange rate), like everything else here in Japan.

I bought two identical boxes and packed everything into their respective box. At the US Military Post office on base, I shipped the first stateside. It cost $56 dollars and took about a week to get to its destination. At the Japanese post office, I filled out a lengthy form of which I barely understood and braced myself for the shipping amount due. 1,200 yen. That’s about $13 bucks. At first I thought I had done something wrong, but since no one spoke English at the post office, I just had to have hope that it was indeed going to the right place and arriving sometime before next year. I chanced the language barrier and went ahead and asked the woman in English, “When will it get there? Next week? Two weeks?” She took a minute to punch in some things on her computer and comes back with a hesitant, but what seemed clear enough, “Tomorrow.”

Then I knew I had done something wrong.

Because how in the world can a simple post office deliver as fast (if not better) than Fedex can back home?

Turns out that a simple post office can indeed knock yours socks off in Japan. I emailed my friend to be on the lookout for the package over the next few days and, lo and behold, she said it arrived by 10:00 am the next morning. I had only been to the post office around 2:00 pm the prior day.

Gotta love these ultra-efficient Japanese.