[HN Gopher] The Magical Japanese Art of Luggage Forwarding
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The Magical Japanese Art of Luggage Forwarding
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 44 points
Date : 2023-10-26 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (craigmod.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (craigmod.com)
| alexachilles90 wrote:
| Thanks for the tip! Will be heading to Tokyo and Kyoto in Nov so
| this will help.
| freetime2 wrote:
| > 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.
| withinboredom wrote:
| 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.
| toyg wrote:
| 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.
| mmastrac wrote:
| 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.
|
| Don't use roads in Japan!
| pnw wrote:
| 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?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| 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.
| drcode wrote:
| You end up taking a lot of trains/metros when travelling in
| Japan, and there isn't a lot of room for luggage.
|
| Sure, if your only travel in Japan is a single trip from the
| airport to the hotel, you won't need this.
| seo-speedwagon wrote:
| 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.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I think it requires reframing travel a bit.
|
| 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.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| 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.
| alliao wrote:
| I was in Japan when the quake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown happened
| on 11th of March 2011. More specifically my fiancee 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.
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