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.
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.
Reminiscent of the plot in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lunchbox. A meet-cute with the famous Bombay Dabba-Walas (lunchbox delivery service) accidentally messing up a delivery, and leading to a correspondence and later a meeting between an unhappy housewife and a lonely widower.
OK. That's the second time now. I feel like in the last 48 hours, "meet-cute" or "meetcute" has been introduced as a New Word and everyone got the memo but me.
It’s not new. It’s been a thing in writing about rom
coms since at least the early 90s, if not earlier.
Edit: Wikipedia cites a first usage in print of 1941, which implies it was already a common trope at the time: The earliest example given by the Oxford English Dictionary is from Anthony Boucher's mystery novel The Case of the Solid Key (1941), in which a character says "We met cute, as they say in story conferences."
Also, everyone should watch Roman Holiday because honestly they never needed to make another romcom after that and the meet cute is the sweetest you'll ever see.
But it was largely limited to professional storywriters, Hollywood / Broadway types. The internet spread their lingo much more widely, and terms like that have become more common and fashionable in recent years.
He really does do movies like that, doesn't he? Stuck in the airport in the terminal, stuck on a remote island in castaway, even chasing decaprio in catch me if you can...
Reminds me of the CollegeHumor skit video where a layabout husband excitedly shows his wife a magic box in the bedroom where he puts his dirty clothes and a day later they appear clean and folded in his drawer.
What door? How did they know your address? I don't enter my address when flying. Maybe my miles card has it, but that feels far removed from the baggage handler's computers.
I was in Japan when the quake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown happened on 11th of March 2011. More specifically my fiancée 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.
I have my fair share of world travel stories, and although at the time were quite distressing, they tend to be forged in our minds as our greatest memories for the years to come. Thanks for sharing.
Everywhere else in the world, "customer service" means answering a telephone and following a script. In Japan, "customer service" means "a guy in a suit and tie will come to your hostel to hand-deliver a rental cellphone, show you how it works, and remind you very politely to return it within the rental window or you will face overage charges". It's truly a different planet.
They still 100% follow a script, it's just a more florid one. If anything it's harder to get the kind of service that makes a real difference in Japan.
In general I always see people from the West venerate the qualities of Japanese society, without realizing that it stems from extreme collectivism and that if America or Europe was similar you’d have much of your individuality grinded out of you.
Incidentally, the author of Kiki's Delivery Service mixed the two up and used the trademarked version instead of the generic one. When the anime was being made several years later, someone decided to look into it, and found that they did not actually have permission to use the trademark. But, the owner of the trademark agreed to let them use it, so they didn't have to change the name of the anime adaptation.
Meanwhile, I'm off to write a book about people who google xeroxing kleenex.
You don't strictly need the permission of a trademark holder for their trademark to appear in your creative work.
It is generally done, but not required.
Depends on the country that you're presenting the creative work. Japan specifically is known to be harsh on trademark enforcement. It's fairly common that unless you enforce your trademark, you have an extremely high chance of losing exclusivity.
It's in the title of the work, though, which may be different than appearing in the work, though. And it's in Japan, where the law may be different from US law.
Yes, that's perfectly normal. It's not like the US where everything is $x.99. Prices can be anything. With the latest inflation, they've been going up, but I'm guessing they just make a calculation for what the price should be based on their costs, whereas in the US they always round up to do the x.99 thing.
now I know why Yamato are allergic to genericized trademarks. See: their insistent usage of ２次元コード(nijigen code) instead of "QR code" in their Japanese materials
- if you're sending your luggage to the airport, check the deadline for sending, depending where you are sending from it could be 2-3 days before your flight
- hotels I paid at were cash only for this service (one of the few things I paid in cash, but likely depends on the hotel)
- some hotels did not take payments for sending, only supporting cash on delivery, so if you're sending to another hotel you should check if they will accept it
Sending from a convenience store is another option if those two last points are problems.
Another thing I thought of, the two times I needed it, the hotels sold cardboard boxes (a few hundred yen) and provided packing tape for free.
I got caught up by that first thing hard! I went to Fukuoka for 5 days and asked the person running the Yamato counter in Tokyo how many days I needed to bring my luggage in advance for it to show up at the airport. They said two days, so I showed up three days before I left Japan. Turns out they needed four[0]!
I managed to work around this by taking a round-trip Shinkansen trip[1] back to Tokyo to ship my bags from there, at the cost[2] of losing a day in Fukuoka, a Kirby Cafe reservation, and several hits to my pride. I did wind up going to a Japanese arcade for like the first time in my life and acquiring a crippling addiction to rhythm games, but that's a story for another time.
I've never sent baggage from a hotel though - I always just drag my baggage over to the nearest Yamato desk.
[0] And would only explain this to me in rather impenetrable manual keigo that resulted in them pulling out the Translator App of Shame.
[1] I had three bags plus backpack. The Shinkansen baggage limit is two bags per passenger, so I needed to get rid of at least one bag and ideally two.
[2] The monetary cost was zero - the JR Pass is like the god of train tickets and it's a shame they spiked the price.
You could've takyubin'd one or two bags to a convenience store in Tokyo and collected them once you got off the shinkansen. They basically add an arbitrary extra day to the time if you're sending to an airport, in case it gets delayed.
I checked Yamato Transport's website the day they told me it'd take four days to get my bags to the airport. Turns out they were backed up on packages coming out of Kyushu[0].
The next time I take a trip to Japan I'll probably just ship bags to the airport a week in advance and have them held there.
Most places accept IC cards, which work like debit cards that you load money onto. Hotels support credit cards, but some western banks have trouble with the Japanese payment system.
Since 2003 JCB has had an agreement to process Amex transactions in Japan, so Amex is accepted everywhere that credit cards are accepted, which is usually uncommon.
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.
If you have lots of luggage going to the airport, the "limousine bus" services (they are just coach buses) are a good option if you're near one of the pick-up locations.
Allowing two bags per person, it was cheaper for us and didn't need to send it two days in advance.
In the 90s, you used to be able to checkin, bag-drop, pass security and pass immigration at the bus terminal in Nihonbashi, and take a bus to Narita and bypass everything and go straight to your gate.
I lived outside Fukuoka for a while. It was a much easier airport to get in and out of. I usually took the train from the airport that dropped me off a few blocks from my apartment in Iizuka. But yes, that train also had space for bags. I usually tried to manhandle my own bags for international flights, but Yamato for everything in-country. My spouse and I did rent a car once (I got a Japanese driving license, so had to use it.) I also can't recommend driving near big cities, but out west near Aso there were some great rural areas to tour by automobile (though it would have been much cheaper to travel by bus.)
Though... we did randomly come upon the Panawave Laboratory, and the sight of a gaijin driving around seemed to shock some people our in the middle of the more rural neighborhoods.
Narita is really far! But cabs are more reasonable of a choice for Haneda depending on where you are, where it will be more like $50 and maybe save you half an hour or so if you’re in the opposite side of the city.
JP Post (one of the major postal companies) used to be a government entity. Now, it's a private business with the government having a much less share and less responsibility.
Similar to the railway companies. It's interesting how these things just work out either way in Japan.
Another note:
If you forget something from a hotel in 1 place, you can always have them send it to where you are going too (着払い; payment-at-arrival).
Sometimes, it's hard to find legitimate complaints when living in Japan.
I just did the Shimanami Kaido, the most famous bike route in Japan, yesterday and used a variation of this. It was designed for cyclists as the bridge entry ramps have low inclines of ~3%, and there are minimal situations where you have to stop. The visual indicators are clear enough that you can go without your electronics for navigation, too, and the pavement is smooth.
The route is from Onomichi in Hiroshima prefecture to Imabari in Ehime prefecture. It consists of 6 islands and 7 bridges, but I took a ferry for one of those bridges.
The weather was chilly but I didn’t want to bring my jacket since I expected to sweat from the ~70km ride. The luggage delivery cost was 2,200yen per item regardless of size. The drop-off time is 8am-10am and pickup time is 6pm-10pm. The ride should only take 4 hours but I took my time, started at noon, took many sightseeing/refreshments, and did 90km in total with detours knowing there’s no point in arriving early. You can elect your drop off location so I picked the onsen hot spring. Arrived at 7pm, confirmed my luggage was there and used the hot spring to recover from the bike ride.
I did part of the Kakishima Kaido last week, around the island Etajima, in Hiroshima Bay. One of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Getting into an onsen bath after a long ride is just heaven!
Disney World used to do this too precovid, called Magical Express (when staying in a Disney resort). But it was even better because they would grab your bags straight from the plane, and it would be in your hotel room waiting for you before you got there. So you wouldn't need to do anything at all, except get yourself to Disney using the chartered bus that dropped you off at your hotel.
They stopped doing it probably because of covid transfer fears, but probably more largely because attendance was down, so it probably wasn't cost effective. They've kept the chartered bus service, but removed the "magical" parts of it, so now you have to get your own bags again.
The Disney travel agent told me to print these labels out in Australia and just attach them to the luggage. Then we just had to hop on a bus when we landed in Florida.
Shame they don't do this anymore by the sounds of it. I was completely sceptical of the whole Disney experience but it all went so smoothly.
Recently started re-reading Discworld, and the Luggage is the first thing it reminded me of :) Almost forgot how delightful of a character Terry Prachett managed to conjure out of an (albeit sentient) “object”.
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?
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.
I’ve never tried leaving them at a hotel for an extended period of time (overnight or longer). Also my understanding from the article is that you can ship them from the airport to the hotel, to arrive in the future at your date of arrival - not sure if this is the same as your experience in Dubai but either way, new to me :)
I wouldn't say normal, it depends on the size and availability at the hotel. I also left some baggage in Indonesia for a month, but the hotel was large and lax. In two other similar-sized hotels they were storing the bags either in the open-air lobby or in a small staff-only hallway. Neither place would be suitable for medium-term storage.
I and my wife have used this many times when traveling in Japan. It is useful for the shopping suitcase, i.e. the big check-in one that collects the souvenirs, cosmetics, food/wine, electronics, etc. that are going home with you. It only needs to arrive before you depart a city, so that you can add some items and send it along.
Even if you don't buy stuff when traveling, if you would want certain gear for some legs but not others, you can use it as a locker, i.e. moving the hiking boots into your carry-on before the Mt. Fuji leg, putting the heavy winter clothing in after you leave Hokkaido, etc.
And in contrast to luggage handling in the U.S., Japan's luggage handling is quite cheap, usually on-time, and always handled delicately with very little risk of loss or theft.
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.
In Japan, the default assumption is that unless you're in a very rural area, everyone goes everywhere by public transit. Even if you're just heading to downtown Tokyo from Narita airport, the Skyliner will be faster and cheaper than a taxi. Furthermore, you probably aren't taking a taxi from one prefecture to the next.
Yet I never see Japanese people with luggage on trains, whether that be an airport train or the subway. I'm pretty sure everyone takes a taxi or an airport bus when they have luggage.
I did consider that, the other factor is Japanese people travel for smaller periods of time so maybe carry tiny suitcases instead of the (multiple) huge ones you see foreigners carry.
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.
> how is this more convenient than taking your luggage with you in a taxi/Uber to the hotel you are staying at?
Taxis are slow, expensive, and worse ride quality than a train, and you'd still have to carry your luggage.
> Waiting hours for luggage to show up seems pretty inconvenient?
You don't wait for it though - it's usually there in your room when you check in, or at worst you have to collect it from the front desk. It's similar to the best part of being on a cruise - you can just go around whichever city you're visiting today, and at the end of the day all your stuff is in your room without you having to worry about it.
If you are going by taxi/uber, sure. Although you will need to drop off the luggage there before going on with your day, instead of immediately starting your travel-y stuff.
If you're going by train, the train from the airport to the hotel may be cramped and standing the whole way and involve going up and down stairs or pulling the luggage along streets. If it's $13 to ship it to the hotel, that's a pretty good deal.
Note that Haneda and Narita are both ~1 hour away from Tokyo so a taxi can be pretty expensive especially if you're alone.
The shinkansen has plenty of space for luggage. The overhead space will hold even a fairly large suitcase, and there are luggage racks and dedicated luggage space behind the rearmost seats. Finally you can just put it in front of your seat as the legroom is insane.
Yeah I always reserve a seat, as that is required if you have large luggage. Luggage in the subway is not really a problem in my experience, it's the same as one extra person going with you.
Plenty is not a word I would use. You need a specific reservation to use the luggage areas near the doors, often they are fully booked.
A group of Vietnamese joined my train last week having just got off a flight from Da Nang to Osaka. They didn't have a luggage reservation, they couldn't fit their medium size cases overhead. They had to store it in their legroom for three hours. It looked pretty uncomfortable even for a 5ft3 Viet woman. I have long legs, I ain't doing that.
Fair, I have a large suitcase and it fit overhead. I've also never had trouble reserving the space and I've also put the luggage in front of me with no issue.
We have a similar thing in Switzerland but it’s not only done by the Hotel but mostly by the train organisation SBB. Someone will pick up your luggage from your home (costs about 50$) or you can deposit it at your local train station (30$). Then on the day of your flight you don’t need to worry about your luggage and on your flight back you can specify to which train station or home they should deliver your suitcase.
https://www.sbb.ch/en/station-services/before-your-journey/l...
This needs to be implemented world-wide. No more fighting for the little space in the overhead bin, no more returned packages, travel light would be the norm. I've had mail returned from hotels because "the guest hasn't checked in yet" though the guest checked in the same day. Or worse, was at the hotel for weeks.
While cool, learning to pack light can also do wonders. I'm not suggesting to onebag a 50L backpack, but to just travel with a wheeled suitcase carry-on and a day-bag that slides onto the handles.
Low Cost Carriers (LCC) sometimes weigh your carry-on bags, and I was so proud of the day that happened to me. My suitcase + laptop bag weighed in at exactly 7.0 KG, and the check-in agent kinda looked at it in shock.
While American Immigration & Customs is a breeze thanks to Global Entry, other countries can have long immigration lines (and elite status may not help you there), which is when I see people carrying their backpack for an hour or having to slide it across the immigration hall for an hour. The wheeled suitcase carry on saves your back while still being able to store plenty. Don't get a hardshell, get a fabric based suitcase as that will be lighter. I also often travel with airlines that I have elite status with, which affords me either less scrutiny or extra carry-on weight allowance.
Just need to plan when to book a suite that has a laundry machine, a hotel that has self-serve laundry, or a long stay where you can send your clothes to be cleaned overnight.
Some Japanese trains only stop very briefly at intermediate stations, so having less luggage also makes it easier to get off quickly. We had a close call when alighting at a tiny station and were glad our large case had been sent on ahead! (Turning around at the next stop would have been painful, since it only had one train per hour).
I had to do the latter once in Germany; there was plenty of time to alight, but everyone had piled up their luggage and were picking it out via an O(n^2) algorithm :(
Carrying a backpack will make your back stronger, you don't "save" it by using a wheeled suitcase unless you already have a health condition. Ideally the backpack will have a strap to go along your chest for stability.
Pretty much every hotel in Japan has a laundry machine, although I don't know of any suites that include one, unless you're going for a managed apartment.
Hmm, I thought students could develop back problems from carrying textbook laden backpacks? Is that just an old wives tale?
The Holiday Inn Shin Osaka has a washing machine in the suites. Not sure why, but that was just my experience. You’re right that hostels and ”budget” chains like Dormy Inn will also have them.
I’ve also stayed at a resort on Sentosa Island that only had 1 self service washer/dryer machine, and I had to set a 2AM alarm clock to put our clothes in because it was busy otherwise. Usually hotels with self service laundry machines have a whole row of them. Probably by design so I’d give up and pay $10 per shirt washed.
> Pretty much every hotel in Japan has a laundry machine, although I don't know of any suites that include one, unless you're going for a managed apartment.
Which is insanely expensive compared to just going down the street to a normal coin laundromat. They are pretty much anywhere (at least in most big cities) and very quick and cheap. You can pay 500 yen at a laundromat, or 5000 yen at your hotel laundry room.
You may be thinking of a hotel's laundry service at those prices. The most I've ever paid to do my own laundry is 600¥ and I've had as low as 200¥, all at 3-4 star hotels.
Good tips, although I prefer the hard case carry-on trolley because it will survive the occasional situation where you want to use it as check-in luggage (eg bringing bottles or extra weight) or when it’s forced to be checked in at boarding (happened few times and a cloth trolley does not come out unharmed).
Huh, I've had a fabric carry-on trolley that I frequently check in, just to not carry it around if I don't have to. Had it for close to 10 years and it traveled all over Europe, North Africa and Asia (about 30 countries all in all) Recently noticed the handle being a bit wobbly but still workable. I think they are quire sturdy as they flex and bend more easily, and seem a lot harder to "rapture" than thin plastic ones.
The problem with hard shell cases is that they’ll have the side punched in instead of just bending. Maybe there are some really strong ones that aren’t heavy, but I don’t know. I usually try to travel on widebody planes which usually don’t run out of overhead space unlike narrow bodies or regional planes.
If on a small route in a small plane then it usually isn’t full.
The only time I had to gate check my bag was when I flew on a 9 seater Cessna which required all carry ons to be loaded into the nose. There was trouble confirming the landing gear was down so I was worried my laptops were going to serve as the crumple zone.
I always wince slightly when I see one of these pronunciation guides for words that I actually know how to pronounce, because for some reason they're never quite right. (I don't know how I'd do better, mind you, and this pronunciation would get the job done.)
It's hard to express accurate pronunciation of Japanese to English speakers, in writing, because most of them have no idea what a geminate consonant is. If you're speaking, you can show them just what it sounds like verbally and teach them quickly, but in writing like this it's not so simple.
This just comes down to the difference in the phonological inventories of the two languages. English vowels are especiqlly notorious for being incompatible with many languages.
There are orthographies devised for some African languages that are basically IPA, but I don't know to what extend these are actually used. Another thing nicht be languages with very small phonetic inventories, like hawaiian, which is almost IPA except for the glottal stop apostrophe.
I've never even set foot in the Western Hemisphere, try again.
> It's not what IPA is simple (it's not hard for sure), it's what 99% of Americans never even had a chance to at least learn what it is.
How does that compare to say China, Brazil or India?
> Most of the time when you learn some other language the pronunciation is given in IPA.
I have native-level proficiency in 3 languages, all of which use entirely different writing systems. I also studied French in highschool. Guess what I was never taught?
Yup. A couple days before a trip, I dropped my bags off at the Poplar (like a 7-11) next to my apartment. On the day of my trip I just take a day-pack with me on the train. When I got to the onsen, my bag was magically there already. I think it cost somewhere around 3000 yen ($25).
After I moved back to the states I talked informally with some VCs about the idea of doing something similar. "Americans don't trust people to handle their bags" was the refrain. I think it's cause I wasn't pitching a slick web app.
Also... it seems Yamato Transport (the company that handled my bags) actually cared about not losing bags.
> 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.
It also usually takes two or three days for a bag sent from a hotel to reach the airport in particular compared to overnight for other such location pairs in the same urban area. On some Shinkansen trains there are extra luggage seats available that have more storage space for luggage that can be prebooked - I've used these before from and to the airport, with luggage delivery between hotels.
> It took me more than a decade of living in Japan to notice the takkyu-bin service.
That’s sort of shocking to me. I’ve only spent a few months in Japan but it was well known among people I knew offering advice leading up to each trip and mentioned on every single travel guide. On top of that there are always lines at every counter and you see them often enough picking up and dropping off in hotels.
A lot of people travel without research nowadays: book the flight, book the hotel, find everything out as you go. That's how I did my first trip to Japan and I felt like an alien.
There's been a dozen times where I only started finding a hotel while Ubering to the international airport. One time I had to change out of my seat for landing because my seatbelt wasn't working, so I sat next to a stranger and started talking. She offered to split a cab with me and asked where I was staying, but I told her I didn't book a place yet (she was shocked). I found a nice hotel chain, booked it and on the way downtown told the driver.
I like to visit and explore a city, and then I'll know where I want to stay the next time I go back. I've certainly screwed myself a few times (I didn't know Seoul was so big so every day started & ended with a 1 hour Uber) but I have the entire rest of my life to learn and experience, so why try to do it "perfect" the first time? I've been to Singapore a few times but haven't seen those Lion fountains yet. I don't know where they are, but it'll be cool when I run into them by accident sometime in the future.
Hah a kindred spirit. And I thought I was just weird for booking things last minute and not caring too much if it doesn't end up perfect. One of my best experiences have been when things "mixed up". No good story starts with "and everything went according to plan".
I am a full-time nomad and barely do any advance planning and still heard about it constantly. On top of that it is highly visible while in Japan. Counters and signs for it at the airport, every hotel offers it and most will ask about it, and you see the people running bags around on bicycles and motorcycles with trailers all over the place. You would need to be an exceptionally oblivious person to miss it for ten years.
Do people living somewhere usually read travel guides? I'm still young so I haven't visited many countries (just ~13) but I've never read a travel guide, I presume they have useless information. I've also gone on 3 trips to Japan and I've never heard of takkyu-bin, although I'll consider it for future visits.
I mean I guess if you don't go to the airport or any hotels for ten years it might be possible to miss it as well. Every hotel offers it, the airport has plenty of signs, and the actual people on bikes and motorcycles with trailers moving the bags are _all over_ the place.
I only found out about it on my most recent (5th) trip to Japan. I've transited Haneda, Narita and Osaka and never noticed the signage or had it mentioned to me by my hotel.
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.
On that note, having been over there several times I’d strongly recommend a small shoulderbag or something to carry one’s passport and a coin purse as well to act as a place to put all the random things received while out and about, because otherwise your pockets will be packed (and your passport will get damaged/bent).
I’m fond of my Peak Design Field Pouch[0] for this because I find it the perfect size and it matches the laptop bag I’ve been using for ages but naturally there’s a ton of options.
Maybe, maybe not. Your passport is absolutely necessary to get on the airplane and go home, wherever you go. But in Japan, it is mandatory for foreigners to carry their passport at all times in public, and to show that passport to police officers upon request. Not all countries are like this; in America, there's no requirement to carry ID at all times, for instance.
Also in Japan, if you're a foreigner (this includes non-citizens on long-term visas or even with permanent residence status), you must carry identification at all times. Usually, this means your "residence card", since it's dumb to carry your passport unless you're traveling internationally. Citizens, however, are not required to carry ID. This can cause problems when police assume you're a foreigner and don't believe you're naturalized.
> Not all countries are like this; in America, there's no requirement to carry ID at all times, for instance.
US law requires aliens to carry their 'certificate of alien registration' or 'alien registration receipt card' 8 U.S. Code § 1304 (e) [1]
US citizens have no such requirement. And, afaik, have no requirement to have ID at all. Professional medical providers participating in a birth have an obligation to register the child under state laws, but not all births are connected to professional medical providers. It's really convenient to have a birth certificate, so most citizens have their births registered, but it's not required.
> Usually, this means your "residence card", since it's dumb to carry your passport unless you're traveling internationally.
Why would it be "dumb"? But regardless, AIUI you're legally required to carry your residence card specifically (or, if you're a temporary visitor, specifically the passport you entered on with its entry stamp, although they relaxed that part for covid), not just identification.
IMO not so much unless you travel a lot. It's more expensive, but you'd worry more about a residence card being used to e.g. open fraudulent bank accounts in your name.
Nope. Plenty of countries where you can be out and about in public without any id at all (e.g. the UK). Even in Germany (which is pretty strict relative to other countries I've been in) it's legal to leave your passport in your hotel, although you risk having the police escort you back there to show it to them.
We used a luggage forwarding service when we did an Alaskan cruise recently. The trip was 2 weeks total and we needed to pack for temperatures ranging from the low 40s to the high 80s. Plus my wife is pregnant and we had our toddler with us.
It was a little stressful worrying about whether our bags would actually be there on the ship, but it was well worth not hauling everything around.
Switzerland has a similar service. For about 25 Swiss francs they’ll take your suitcase from the airport to your hotel, I think pretty much anywhere in Switzerland. I didn’t use it personally, but it’s a very nice option to have.
when i was at a uk boarding school back in the 1960s, British Rail used to have this thing called PLA - Passenger Luggage in Advance. They would pick up your luggage (in this case a trunk with my clothes & stuff in it) and transport it to an address at your destination. I really never understood how this all worked (our house-masters did all the paperwork), but it worked well.
Just another example of how in some ways (not all, i will admit) the past was a better place.
Trains used to offer something like that when I was young, because the early trains had more room (and less passengers) and the late trains were packed to the gills and overflowing.
Moving some of the luggage made their life easier at the cost of a final delivery.
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.