Relocating from Japan to Australia

[jeanieofoz]

Hi, sorry if this is a repeat thread because I missed the original in my searches.
I need to move back to Australia soonest because an immediate family member has become seriously ill. I have been in Japan for 5 years and, being a pack rat who loves books, I have a heap of stuff that I want to bring back.

So I am looking for advice on affordable, trustworthy movers from Japan to Australia.

Currently my last resort? only option is to post stuff back by surface mail, which does not take into account anything that I have that doesn't fit into a large post-pack.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Cheers,
J

[larabell]

The last time I had to move a huge amount of stuff from Japan on my own was maybe 12 years ago so even if I remembered the name of the company, it might not do much good. But what I did was look through the ads in Metropolis (and I think at the time there was also an English phone book available from NTT -- Japan Yellow Pages) and just picked one. There are a number of companies who do bulk moves. They consolidate smaller shipments into frieght containers that go on a ship. The price was very reasonable, as I recall. But if you ship with a consolidator, you will probably have to do your own customs pick-up. I sent my stuff to Los Angeles and just rented a truck, drove to customs, signed some papers, and loaded the stuff from the dock into the truck. It really wasn't as ominous as it sounded. At least in the US, if it's obviously personal household goods they hardly take any interest.

[synthia]

I had an agent handle picking up stuff I shipped from a couple of countries. Stuff went into customs storage, and the agents got everything through and onto a moving van. I think the agents were associated with the movers I hired to bring the stuff to my place. One shipment was small enough to be FedExed after clearing, a large rug was shipped by movers, and my household goods were also handled by a mover.