[HN Gopher] The Magical Japanese Art of Luggage Forwarding ___________________________________________________________________ The Magical Japanese Art of Luggage Forwarding Author : bookofjoe Score : 44 points Date : 2023-10-26 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (craigmod.com) (TXT) w3m dump (craigmod.com) | alexachilles90 wrote: | Thanks for the tip! Will be heading to Tokyo and Kyoto in Nov so | this will help. | freetime2 wrote: | > Even the airports have a takkyu-bin counter. Disembark, breeze | through immigration, and head straight there. Send your bags off. | | Last time I used takkyu-bin at Haneda airport there was a massive | line at the Yamato transport desk. I think we spent 20+ minutes | waiting. We had to use it because we had way too much luggage to | schlep on a shinkansen, but if I only had a single suitcase - | even a large one - I would probably just bring it with me. | | The direction, or sending between hotels, has always been fine | though. | withinboredom wrote: | At my home airport, I was in a rush to meet the CTO for dinner | after flying half way across the world. I didn't have time to | grab my luggage, so I just left it. I was home, so even if it got | lost, I didn't care in that moment. | | My luggage showed up at my door the next morning. | | Since I was flying fairly regularly, I did the same thing again | when I landed at home. Sure enough, my luggage showed up at the | door the next day. I wasn't charged anything. It was magic. | | I did this for years (about 6 times), until one day I caught the | guy dropping it off. He apparently worked in lost luggage and my | house was right down the street from his house, so he just | brought it over each time to be nice. | | I felt like an ass, but also, I thought there was some magic | going on. We had a good laugh about it, but I waited for my | luggage after that. | toyg wrote: | That sounds like the beginning of a slice-of-life movie... | Withinboredom and the luggage guy became great pals, travelled | the world together, started a business, met their spouses... | until something dramatic happened, the link was severed, and | now Withinboredom longs for the times they spent together, | underlining how fleeting existence is, how every day is | precious, etc etc. | mmastrac wrote: | We just returned from Japan having used luggage shipping the | whole way and it's definitely the way to go. | | The pricing in the article is a bit off. It was about twice what | he suggested, but it might have been because our luggage was | heavy. | | As an experiment, we took a cab from Tokyo to Narita and avoided | shipping the luggage. This was expensive (~$200 USD+) and in | retrospect, I think I'd rather ship the luggages and take the | metro + backpacks. | | Don't use roads in Japan! | pnw wrote: | Maybe I just travel light, but how is this more convenient than | taking your luggage with you in a taxi/Uber to the hotel you are | staying at? Waiting hours for luggage to show up seems pretty | inconvenient? | bobthepanda wrote: | i think this is great for cases where you need to do something | before going to the hotel, or after you check out. | | e.g. you check out at 11am, but you need to get on your flight | at 8pm. you either leave it at the hotel, they might hold on to | it, but you still need to go back for the bag. or you lug it | around for a day. or you stay in the airport way too long. | | also it sounds like you can do it a few days in advance, in | which case your bag just goes without you on your travel, | before you show up. | drcode wrote: | You end up taking a lot of trains/metros when travelling in | Japan, and there isn't a lot of room for luggage. | | Sure, if your only travel in Japan is a single trip from the | airport to the hotel, you won't need this. | seo-speedwagon wrote: | Most of my last trip to Japan was: 1) leave hotel, 2) take | local train / bus in City A to the Shinkansen station, 3) Take | Shinkansen to city B, 4) take local train / bus, 5) walk to | hotel. | | So there wasn't a lot of taxi usage but a lot of (busy) street | walking and (busy) public transit use. Plenty of people did | successfully haul their stuff themselves, but luggage | forwarding saved us a lot of headache. Felt very worth the | price. | | e: There wasn't a lot of waiting either. We shipped our stuff 1 | full day ahead of time (so if we were checking into our next | hotel Wednesday we sent our bags Monday afternoon-ish). Maybe | it can seem annoying to keep a day or two of clothes with you | in a backpack, but cramming into a packed bus in Kyoto with two | roller bags seemed like a far worse bargain to us. | vineyardmike wrote: | I think it requires reframing travel a bit. | | I just got back from Japan ~48hrs ago, and I would've agreed | with you before the trip - we did take a taxi to the hotel from | the airport with our luggage. It seemed easier. | | In Japan, taxis and road travel are VERY expensive (2x big | American cities?), and they have amazing transit | infrastructure. We took trains from city to city, exploring and | staying at different hotels. In America, this would have | required driving. japan has amazing transit, so we wanted to | avoid getting extra taxis when the trains go exactly where we | need. BUT lugging big bags on trains is a massive PITA for | everyone, especially when it's crowded. The trains are great, | and they're _desirable_ if you didn't have luggage. | | Yes, it seems inconvenient, except the framing is bad. We | didn't wait for the bags. We just went about our day, and they | showed up in our hotel room when we got back. We took a | backpack with one change of clothes, laptop, etc, and the rest | of the luggage just showed up later. When it's time to go to | the next hotel, you just pack tomorrow's clothes, give the | concierge your suitcase and start walking. Sure enough, your | bag will be there tomorrow when you get back from being a | tourist. Until reading this article, I didn't know they'd hold | your bags too, which seems great if you wanna see the city for | a few days on a ski trip or something similar where you know | you don't need all your luggage at once. | quickthrower2 wrote: | If you have the anxiety to need all those airtags, I would just | not use the service! Send the heavy stuff you can afford to lose. | Keep your money and passport with you. Maybe a single airtag is | enough. | alliao wrote: | I was in Japan when the quake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown happened | on 11th of March 2011. More specifically my fiancee and I was on | a train bound for Tokyo on some slow train from Kusatsu; a | charming winter wonderland with thermal spring goodness. Our | schedule that day was to stop over Tokyo for a bit of sightseeing | before meeting up with friends in Osaka. We obviously didn't want | to lug our belongs around, so had the foresight of takkyu-bin all | our luggages to Osaka. After some excite.jp translator services | with some Kanji the inn staff managed to made a booking and we | went on our way. | | The train ride was atypical the whole way, the train would've | stopped randomly and carriages were very full. We even got to see | some angry men loudly complaining and tapping the train driver's | door; quite a rare sight in Japan. We later realised it was the | small quakes that had struck before the big one. | | We arrived in Tokyo delayed, we had some food around Ueno | station, just when we were about to board the train the big | earthquake struck. It was loud at first, then slow rolling. But | it went on for too long. You know it's a big one when the local | middle school students are cowering and some even started | screaming. The station's lights shorted from swinging so much and | some spark flew as well. Then news came, the bullet train would | be cancelled, in fact all trains were cancelled. We walked around | aimlessly trying to find accommodation for the night but | couldn't, everyone was stuck in Tokyo. It was quite funny to see | even when almost everything's sold out in convenience stores, | same food/drink were left alone everywhere. | | At the end we sat and slept in a lobby of a 5 star Hotel nearby | Tokyo train station who were nice enough to invite all the people | still out and about at 2am. The next morning the bullet train was | declared fit to run again, phones started working too, and on our | way to catch the train to Osaka, we received a call from our | accommodation in Osaka, the staff simply said your luggages | arrived yesterday and are here waiting for you. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-10-26 23:00 UTC)