After emptying my closets and assembling everything we accumulated in our four years in Japan on the living room floor I decided that it was time to purge. Numerous posts online, garage sales, trips to the recycling shops, and a lot of headache later I have a little less stuff and wanted to share some tips on how to deal with the things you own, whether you are moving back home to your country or to another house or apartment in Japan.

Keep Your Stuff

If you have lots of space in your new place in Japan, or plenty of money to ship a container back home, then by all means, keep your things, because selling them is not profitable here in Japan, unless you have something very marketable and are eBay savvy. The easiest way to transport your items within Japan is renting a car or paying a moving company. If you have only a few boxes, you can use the post office or the delivery service, takkyubin, such as Kuroneko or Sagawa. To ship overseas you can either use a post office or one of the shipping companies.

Post Office

Use the post office if you have large but light items. They charge based on weight, while the container shipping companies charge by volume and may ask you to ship a minimum of one or two cubic meters (one cubic meter = about seven large suitcases). Depending on what you are sending, keep in mind that there is a significant discount for mailing printed materials. I have never had a post office agent check the content of a parcel if I said that I am mailing documents or other printed matter, but be careful, some people report that they were asked to open their packages at the post office for checking. Also make sure to check the weight limitations on the Japan Post website.

Japan post has three shipping options: air mail, SAL which is the economy air mail that takes longer than air and combines both air and surface mail, and surface mail. You can compare prices on the Japan Post website directly. Here is a good overview of the Japan Post services and some other shipping options.

Shipping Company

Use the services of a shipping company to send a container. The price will depend on where you are shipping your items to. Generally they don’t post their prices on their websites, so you will have to call them. You also have to check whether the items will be delivered to the nearest port or to your house, possibly with additional charges.

If you need boxes for packing, you can get smaller ones for free in big grocery stores like Aeon. If you need them in a specific size you can buy them at home stores, such as Cainz Home or Kahma.

Store Your Stuff for Later Pick-Up

If you have friends and family in the area you are leaving and if you plan to go back and visit them again, you may consider asking them to store some of your items for you for later pick-up. This may also work well with things that your family and friends can “borrow” from you and use, assuming they are interested in your stuff and in helping you out. We are asking my husband’s family to store some things for us and it’s a big help.

If this is not an option for you and you decided to sell your stuff, you can advertise it for sale online, have a sayonara sale at your place, or sell to one of the recycle shops.

Photo by Katya Yuri

Advertise Items for Sale Online

There are several places to do this, and you should probably try everywhere you can to increase your exposure. Once you create an online photo album of your items, you can post them on forums in your local community, for example, find the JET community in your area, an online bulletin board for local foreigners, or a local foreign newspaper that has classifieds. You can also post in the classifieds sections on websites such as GaijinPot  (you have to wait for moderator approval), Sayonara Sale, or Craigslist (select your area). The amount of interest in your items would probably depend on the area you live in, whether you are easily accessible, and what it is you sell and how much you ask for it. I have gotten the most responses from GaijinPot postings, but only one resulted in a sale, so I decided to go to a local recycle shop.

Recycle Shops

You probably know that recycle shops accept items, and you can also ask them to come to your house to assess and pick up the larger things such as furniture. They may or may not pay you for your items, they may also charge you, it will all depend on what they are looking for, and what condition your items are in. You don’t have to agree to the deal if you don’t like it, and if you have time, you could even try to have multiple stores come in.

Be prepared that in some cases you will get very little money even for the items you bring into the store. I was once offered 10 yen for a bag full of clothes, some of which was new. I suppose they didn’t want to send me back with my bag of stuff they didn’t want, so they gave me a pity offering. There are a few things you need to keep in mind when preparing for a trip to a recycle shop:

• Bring some ID with you that has both your name and the proof of your address. I didn’t have my alien registration card with me, but they accepted a bill with my name on it and a non-Japanese driver’s license, albeit hesitantly. If you do have your alien registration card, that would probably be the best thing to bring.
• The store will ask you to write your name, address, phone number (usually you can gt away with saying you don’t own one), and possibly other information such as your occupation. Usually English is fine.
• Be prepared that they might reject some or all of your items. In one store I went to they only took one thing out of a large bag of clothes saying that the rest were not season-appropriate so they didn’t need it.
• Browse what’s on sale in the shop before you bring your things for sale to make sure they carry similar items.
• Prepare your items by removing lint from the clothes and fabrics, vacuuming the bags, folding and untangling things, wiping the dust away.
• If you bring clothes, make sure it’s for the right season and ask the store in advance what they accept if in doubt.
• Think of your trip to a recycle shop as of a donation, if you expect to get plenty of cash you may be disappointed.

Recycle shops do not offer much money but they do provide a way to get rid of your stuff, so if you can’t get yourself to throw things out and nobody you know will buy or take them, then it’s a good option.

If you are considering the pick-up then probably the fastest way, if you don’t speak Japanese, is to either find an English-speaking shop or to ask a Japanese friend to help with translating. Keep in mind that you might need your friend to be there not only for the initial phone call but also for the assessment. Make sure that you also call your city’s garbage removal (or sodai gomi) service and get a quote for removing your items as trash. This way you will know if the recycle shop asks you to pay more for removing your items than the trash removal service.

There is an interesting discussion about it on the GaijinPot forum.