The short version
- Three routes cover most people moving to Japan: paying your airline for extra checked baggage, an international luggage shipping service (Send My Bag, My Baggage, Luggage Forward), or shipping by post/freight — your home postal service's EMS-equivalent product for boxes, or an international mover for a fuller household.
- Airlines usually include two checked bags in an economy international fare, and charge per extra piece beyond that — a real number, but one set by your specific airline, route, and fare class, not a fixed industry rate.
- Luggage shipping services sit between the two: they collect from your door, ship by air freight or courier network, and generally cost more per kilogram than an extra checked bag but move more than a suitcase allowance allows.
- "Unaccompanied baggage" is a real duty exemption for people relocating their residence to Japan, but it only works if you declare it in writing at the airport when you enter, and the goods need to clear customs within six months of that entry date.
- This guide compares how these options generally work. It isn't a shipping agent or a customs broker, and it doesn't calculate duty on your specific boxes.
The job offer email usually gives you a start date. It doesn't say anything about the desk lamp you've kept since your first apartment, or whether your record collection is worth the airline's extra-bag fee. Somewhere between "pack two suitcases" and "ship a household," most people moving to Japan land in an awkward middle: more than a carry-on covers, less than a full container needs. What actually fills that gap is three fairly different services, priced and timed in three different ways.
Three ways to get your things there
Every option below trades off price, speed, and how much of it travels with you versus separately. Roughly:
- Airline checked and extra baggage is the option that's already built into your plane ticket. You pack what fits in your allowance for free, and pay a per-piece or per-kilogram fee for anything beyond it. Everything arrives the moment you do.
- International luggage shipping services — Send My Bag, My Baggage, and Luggage Forward are the names that come up most for Japan — collect boxes or bags from your home address and deliver them to a Japan address, usually timed to arrive within a few days of you.
- Postal shipping and freight forwarders cover everything bigger: your home postal service's international parcel or EMS-equivalent product for a moderate number of boxes, or a full-service international mover for a household's worth of furniture, moving by air or sea freight after a volume-based quote.
Airline baggage: free up to a point, then priced per airline
Most international economy tickets to Japan include two free checked bags, commonly up to around 23 kg (50 lb) each — that's the allowance both ANA and JAL publish on their own English-language baggage pages. Business and first-class fares often allow more. Beyond that free allowance, airlines charge for each extra piece, and separately for any single bag that's overweight or oversized. ANA's own excess-baggage page lists ¥20,000 as one example rate for an extra piece, and both airlines let you prepay extra baggage online ahead of your flight, generally cheaper than paying at the airport counter.
None of that is a number you can carry over to your own trip, though. Fare class, route, alliance partner, and even which airport you're departing from all change the actual charge, and prepaid rates differ from airport-counter rates at the same airline. The one reliable step is checking your specific airline's baggage page — or calling them — before you assume a number from a blog post or a friend's trip last year still applies.
What extra baggage is good at: nothing to schedule, nothing to track, no separate delivery address to arrange. What it's not good at: it tops out fast. Once you're past three or four bags, the per-piece fees usually stack up faster than a shipping service would cost for the same weight.
International luggage shipping: a courier built for exactly this gap
Send My Bag, My Baggage, and Luggage Forward each publish a dedicated page for shipping to Japan. All three work roughly the same way: you book online, box or bag your items, and a courier collects from your home address. It's delivered to a Japan address on a tracked timeline, usually a matter of days rather than weeks. My Baggage and Luggage Forward both describe handling the relevant customs paperwork on your behalf as part of the service. None of the three publish a flat, universal price — cost depends on weight, the number of items, and your specific origin and destination, which their own online quote tools calculate case by case.
The trade-off against airline baggage is fairly direct: these services generally cost more per kilogram than an airline's extra-bag fee, but they don't share the airline's strict per-piece limits, and they don't require you to physically carry the extra bags through check-in and immigration yourself. The trade-off against postal shipping runs the other way — a luggage shipping service is usually faster and includes door-to-door collection, at a higher price than boxing something up yourself and taking it to a post office.
A practical detail worth planning around: these services need a delivery address in Japan, which means you generally need to know where you're landing — a new apartment, a temporary share house, or a workplace willing to receive it — before you book the shipment, not just before it arrives.
Postal shipping and freight: for more than a courier box's worth
If what you're moving is closer to a household than a few extra bags, two different services take over. The first is your own home country's postal service and its EMS or Priority Mail International-equivalent product. Most national postal operators participate in the EMS network that connects into Japan Post for last-mile delivery, though the price, weight limits, and transit time are set by your home post office, not by Japan Post itself. This tends to suit a manageable number of boxes: clothes, books, documents, kitchenware, rather than furniture.
The second is a full-service international mover. Companies like Crown Relocations operate a dedicated Japan relocation service: a consultant estimates the volume of what you're shipping, usually after a home or video survey, and returns a quote covering packing, international transport by sea or air freight, and delivery to your new Japan address. This is the only route of the three overall that typically includes the packing labor, and it's generally the most expensive per item, in exchange for not touching a box yourself. Sea freight in particular can take weeks to a couple of months, so it suits people who can live without an item for a while, not something you need on day one.
Side by side
| What matters to you | Airline extra baggage | Luggage shipping service | Postal EMS-equivalent / freight forwarder |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it's priced | Free allowance, then a flat per-piece or overweight fee set by your airline | By weight and item count, quoted online per shipment | Postal: by weight and destination zone. Movers: by shipment volume, quoted after a survey |
| Roughly how much fits | A handful of suitcases before per-piece fees add up fast | Several suitcases' or boxes' worth, up to what one shipment can reasonably carry | Postal: a modest number of boxes. Movers: anywhere up to a full household, furniture included |
| Roughly how fast | Arrives with you, same flight | Typically days, timed around your travel date | Postal: roughly a week to a few weeks depending on service. Movers: weeks by air, or one to a few months by sea |
| Who packs and handles paperwork | You; standard customs declaration only | You pack; some providers handle customs paperwork on your behalf | Postal: you, entirely. Movers: packing staff generally included |
| Best fit | A small overflow beyond your standard allowance, and you'd rather not schedule anything separate | More than airline baggage covers, but not a full household, and speed matters | Postal: a manageable box or two of non-fragile items. Movers: furniture, or simply not wanting to pack it yourself |
Prices, weight limits, and transit times above are general patterns, not quotes. Every airline, courier, and mover sets its own current numbers — confirm with the specific company before you plan a move around any figure here.
Unaccompanied baggage: the duty exemption you have to declare on arrival
Japan Customs runs a specific process for people relocating their residence to Japan, whether that's a first move or a return. Household effects and personal belongings can travel separately from you, by mail, courier, or freight, and still qualify for duty- and tax-free treatment as "unaccompanied articles." Per Japan Customs' own guidance, this generally applies to someone who's been abroad for more than a year, or who plans to stay in Japan for more than a year. The goods generally need to clear customs within six months of the date you enter Japan.
The part people miss is the timing. You don't declare unaccompanied baggage after it arrives — you declare it at the airport, the day you enter Japan, before any of the shipped items have even left for Japan in some cases. The process, per Japan Customs, involves submitting two copies of a written declaration at entry. One copy comes back to you stamped with a certification seal, and you need to keep it: it's what you present later to actually clear the unaccompanied goods when they arrive.
What generally qualifies is used personal and household items — clothes, books, kitchenware, small appliances, furniture — brought in for your own relocation, not new goods intended for resale or commercial samples. Beyond that general shape, whether a specific item or shipment qualifies, and what it would cost if it didn't, is a question for Japan Customs directly or a licensed customs broker, not something this guide calculates.
What this guide does not cover
This is a general comparison of how three shipping routes and one customs mechanism work, not a recommendation of one named company or a walkthrough of your specific visa or entry paperwork. It doesn't cover shipping insurance claims, which are governed by each carrier's own terms, and it doesn't cover items that need special handling — batteries, aerosols, alcohol, or anything a carrier or Japan Customs classifies as restricted or prohibited — which follow their own rules on top of everything described here.
Where this connects
This guide is the mirror image of a question a lot of people ask on the way out of Japan, not just on the way in. If part of your own move involves a return trip later, or you're curious how the same choice looks in reverse, our guide to shipping belongings home when you leave Japan compares Japan Post, Yamato, and international movers for that direction, including how the unaccompanied-baggage exemption differs by destination country once you're the one leaving.
Getting your belongings to Japan is only the first piece of arriving. Once they're on the way, or already at your door, our moving-in week checklist covers the utilities, internet, and furniture decisions that fill the rest of that first week. And a Japan bank account tends to become useful right around the same time a shipment does — some couriers and freight forwarders bill in yen, and a few deliveries involve cash on arrival — so our guide to opening a bank account in Japan is worth reading before your belongings actually land.
One thing worth deciding before any of this: where the shipment is even going. A share house, a monthly apartment, and a regular lease each come with different rules about who can receive a large delivery and when, which our comparison of housing options in Japan covers before you fix an address on a shipping label.
Sources
Checked 2026-08-23.
For Japan Customs' unaccompanied-baggage process for people relocating their residence to Japan, see its FAQ pages (7301, household effects for home relocation and 7103, declaring unaccompanied articles), alongside its general overview of entry procedures (customs.go.jp). For airline checked and extra baggage, see ANA's own English-language pages on free international baggage allowance (ana.co.jp) and excess baggage charges (ana.co.jp), and JAL's international checked baggage page (jal.co.jp). For international luggage shipping services, see each company's own Japan-shipping page: Send My Bag (sendmybag.com), My Baggage (mybaggage.com), and Luggage Forward (luggageforward.com). For postal shipping into Japan and the EMS network Japan Post participates in, see Japan Post's international mail overview (post.japanpost.jp) and its EMS page (post.japanpost.jp), alongside USPS's Priority Mail Express International page as one example of a home-country postal product that connects into that network (usps.com). For a full-service international mover's Japan relocation process, see Crown Relocations' own description of its Japan service (crownrelo.com). None of these pages were affiliate-linked at the time of writing; all are plain links. This guide's sources were checked via web search summaries on 2026-08-23 rather than by loading each page directly, so if a page has changed since, its own current version is the one to trust. Prices, allowances, transit times, and customs rules all change over time and are set entirely by each airline, company, or government agency named above; confirm current details directly before you ship anything or plan a move around a specific figure.