Hi All,
Currently in Japan and struggling with gathering some information. As some of you may know, I am planning on having a Japanese room in my new house that I am building, which will require about 8-10 tatami mats, depending on the size of the mats. I can buy the tatami mats easy enough, already got a quote for them out in Kobe where I am at currently. We will also be visiting a place in Tokyo to get a quote as well, but our problem is transportation and export. As an example, the Kobe place can package our tatami mats 2x per wooden box, with each box having the dimensions of 190x110x10CM, weighting in at 35kg each, for a total of 4 boxes. Most shipping companies will only ship things up to 150CM in length, and under 30KG. We are looking at all of our options and seems like LCL (Less-Than-Container Load) ocean shipping is a decent enough option, but it seems like they only deal with businesses and not individuals. I priced out door to door service from DHL for example, and it make me tick the B2B customer checkbox to even give me a quote, so it seems like as an individual, it's nearly impossible to ship something like this. We also contacted another Tatami company in Tokyo who we will be going to visit in a few weeks, and they ship worldwide, but with our brief discussion over the phone, he mentioned that it's also a matter of shipping to a company, and not to an individual.
So, how the fuck does one ship anything of size across the world without being a company? Do I have to deal with some import business to get this done? Anyone have any recommendations? Could I just ask my buddy who is self-incorporated to assist with this, thus making it a B2B transaction? Looking for any insight for anyone who may have any. I don't need to make this decision right away, I can place the order over the phone later, but as of right now feel a bit lost. Don't know why it has to be this hard..