aaron1262

Does anyone know what the best takuhaibin service to use is? Upon arriving at Narita...i plan to use one of these delivery services to ship my luggage to my host family's house. They are not picking me up and i know from experience that it is not wise to bring my luggage on the train. I know im going to have a lot anyways.

And about how much would it cost?...for a larger size suitcase..

Thanks

ksandness

I haven't done it recently, but the last few times I did it (between 2000 and 2004) it was about ¥2000 per bag.

I LOVE takuhaibin. I've used it to send my large bag from one large city to another while I spent a couple of days going from village to village by bus and rural commuter train.

motytrah

I just sent two bags. One small, one very large (62 inch bag). Tokyo to Osaka. It was 30,000 yen total. I think the split was 10K/20K. Just have the address of your hosts house ahead of time and you'll be fine.

As far as best? No idea. I usually use the service affiliated with Yamato, which is the biggest. You can look up the services on the Airport website.

abmj-jr

Surely you've got a decimal wrong. Wasn't that 3,000 yen? 30k yen would be over $300.00.

OP: Look for the cat symbol.

aaron1262

yeah..30K sounds odd.

thanks for the responses..Yamato is the cat symbol correct? And they have it at the airport?...it's not listed on narita's website.

RichardInSF

In my limited experience, there's no real reason to prefer one over the other, they all seem very reliable and all charge the same. If some of them have lines at NRT, just pick one without a line.

mjm

This is quite correct in my experience too.

Tokyorich

From Narita I prefer Yamato (black cat). They always deliver my bags the next morning in the requested two hour time frame. I have used them for many years. Since thy are so large, they usually have telephone staff who speak english.

I usually send one 70 pound bag to Tokyo for about 1,700 yen. Very nice.

jib71

As other people have indicated, there seems to be little difference between the major companies...

But here's one small difference that I noticed a few years ago:

Yamato (logo: the cat) and Nittsu (logo: the pelican) put the driver's mobile phone number on the "We came while you were out' notification slip. So if there's a delivery while I'm not home, I refer to the notification slip when I get home and I can speak directly with the delivery guy who is often just around the corner....

Maybe Sagawa (logo: the running man) have started to offer this service too. Last time I dealt with them I remember that it was a bit more convoluted to deal with the IVR system (integrated voice response) and reschedule the delivery.

If you're arranging the delivery yourself, you can specify the delivery time to a specific window and this is all irrelevant. Similarly, if you're arranging delivery to a hotel, there should always be someone at the hotel who can accept the delivery.

So.... just go to the company with the shortest line.

abmj-jr

I was actually being about half facetious. I agree with everyone else. In your circumstances just go with whichever line is shortest.

aaron1262

I'll go to the one with the shortest line based on all the responses.

Thanks everyone!

keihin_242

Not sure if it makes a difference to you, but if you use ANA Skyporter/Sagawa you can pick up a few ANA miles.

ilovesoccer

I have used many different delivery services from Narita, Osaka and Chubu Kokusai (Nagoya). You would be very pleased with any service from those airports. They are all reliable.

fifa

Does anyone know how early you can send your luggage via Takuhaibin to Narita airport?

We will be skiing early next year in Hakuba and would like to send our suitcase and ski gear to the airport then travel around Japan for 4 weeks. Will they store it for that long or does anyone have any other suggestions?

jib71

The delivery companies at Narita Airport will store luggage. It doesn't mention any upper limit. If you decide to go for that option, I'd visit the counters at Narita before you go to Hakuba and speak with them about what you're trying to do.

Charges may be rather steep for four weeks:
(Guidance is roughly 500yen per day to store a suitcase).
http://www.narita-airport.jp/jp/guid...st/svc_06.html

A better plan might be to set something up with a good hotel in Tokyo (or near the airport) - somewhere that you can spend the last night before departing - and find out if they can offer storage facility to hold your luggage for the four weeks before your check in.

Somewhere like the Imperial is likely to find a way to help you, I think. For a week or less, I'm sure it would be free of charge. For a month... well, give them a call and see what they say. (And please post the results here for everyone's benefit).