apedraza

Incredibly valuable info you posted. Thank you so much, I'm sure I'll have occasion to use it!

The box didn't look as if it had been opened, and the plastic wrap the dealer used, as well as the bubble wrap around that, seemed to have been undisturbed. I'd say the same was mentioned on the customs form. The form wasn't delivered to me with the package, though, so I'd have to ask the dealer if we want 100% confirmation.

I recently purchased a blade with mounting from a Canadian dealer. The shipping was through UPS Overnight Delivery. What followed was very frustrating, and I stress here at the start that it was in no way the fault of the dealer. Customs for UPS is clearing through their Louisville facility. Using the tracking info provided by the dealer, I could see that it did in fact clear Customs the next day, but was then held with the following language appearing on the tracking page, "A NON-CUSTOMS GOVERNMENT AGENCY HOLD CAUSED THIS DELAY". Another day passed, and I was then contacted via phone by a UPS rep. She wanted to know what species of stingray had been involved in the wrapping. I gently explained that some of these pieces being very old, you'd need some DNA analysis or a reliable time machine to answer that question. She went on to tell me that the UPS Louisville facility was now a checkpoint for Fish & Wildlife, and that any shipments involving animal byproducts were being flagged for extra scrutiny. She added that she'd place "the most common species of stingray" in the form Fish & Wildlife was requesting we fill out, and hope for the best. A couple of days later, the piece was finally released and on its way to me. A weekend being smack dab in the middle by then, I ended up getting the piece more than a week later. I posted this on the Nihonto and NihontoStudy lists at Yahoo!, and at Brian's request, I'm posting it here, too. Primarily to warn anyone shipping from Canada to the USA about what seems to be a new piece of red tape, which could potentially lead to a sword, or part of one, being confiscated, and also to see if anyone has had similar experiences.

I was doing a quick google on “nihontopedia†to see if I'd been picked up by Google, and was surprised to find this site as the only other hit. I read all the posts and decided they warranted a response from me, mainly to thank everyone for even discussing my modest initiative, and secondly to answer a few comments which I'd like to clarify. First off, thanks, David, for mentioning my site here. Much appreciated! To Rich Turner: Yes, anyone can edit a posting. I'm banking that such edits will improve or complement prior postings, and not be vandalistic in nature, or worse, descend into the ego clashes you also mention. As with Wikipedia, if “edit wars†do break out, the sysops can lock an article and thus prevent further modifications. It seems to be working well for Wikipedia, and since the Nihonto community is much smaller, I think, than Wikipedia's, I hope we can make it work. Yes, upon rereading that here I realized it may have been coming across differently from what I intended. I never meant to even imply that the information already online is inaccurate or flawed in any way. I was just pointing out that you can find erroneous info on line, and for the beginner, the person just starting to research on nihonto, it can be almost impossible to determine what's legitimate and what's not. I, personally, owe a great debt to the many people who have posted accurate knowledge on the web. I did not mean to belittle their efforts in any way. If anything, I want to make a place available on the web where the people who have the knowledge, and are recognized as such by their peers, can come together and collect all that knowledge for everyone's benefit. A lot of these people I would be happy to make sysops of Nihontopedia so that they can in turn do peer review on what others post, and help make sure that the information does remain accurate, useful and impartial. And, lastly, based on your comment I did rewrite that portion of the main page that was sending out a wrong message. Thanks for pointing it out to me. We will have a links page (feel free to create one, just go in and type “useful linksâ€. It will tell you no such page exists, and allow you to create it). Yes! Tosogu are definitely included. Again, feel free to start posting on the subject. To David Flynn: I hope the egos can be put aside, too, for everyone's benefit. As for due credit, all articles have a tab on the top labeled “Historyâ€. This tab tracks all changes as well as contributors. Besides allowing for proper credit, this also allows sysops to revert to prior versions of an article if vandalism or other inappropriate edits occur. And, David, again, thanks for initially posting about my new site here, as well as for your wishes. To Dr. Richard Stein: You are one of those people I mentioned before, to whom I owe a large debt for all the great info on your site regarding Nihonto. Thank you! At the same time, I'm very sorry you seem to be against the idea behind Nihontopedia. To be honest, you and your site were a big part of what inspired me to think about something like Nihontopedia. It was the desire to have a site like yours, only allowing others to contribute at will, while still keeping some control over content. Also, and linked to your comment in your post regarding information you have saved from now defunct websites, I wanted a site that could outlive us all, and not be dependent on any one person's resources or goodwill. I plan on turning over Nihontopedia, once it reaches critical mass, to an organization. I still haven't decided if that will be an existing one, or one created for that sole purpose. But I definitely don't want to be the sole owner in the long run. To Carlo Tacchini: It would be up to us to make sure this does not happen. I'm sure that once they realize there is active policing of all contributions, and inappropriate ones are deleted, they will quickly grow bored and leave. That's if they ever arrive in the first place. To Dr. Richard Stein again: Here's where I hope we can be mature enough and recognize in any articles that need to be that specific, that the jury is still out, with some attributing X type of work or object to Y school, and others to Z school. To Darcy: I don't want to make us instant experts, I just want the knowledge collected and added to constantly in a single “libraryâ€, for easy access when required. So, by all means let's all continue studying independently, but at the same time, let's make our findings public and easy to find so we all don't have to face the same hurdles acquiring them. Not all of us have ready access to the same obscure tome, more's the pity. And isn't that a huge shame? Maybe we can entice them out. Wow. Where did I say all the content creators suck or take a shotgun to them? You'd have to be pretty creative to make that come out of my blurb on the main page. Anyway, I have modified that paragraph (and welcome any other suggestions from anyone) since it definitely seemed to be creating friction where none was intended. To Henry Wilson: Yes, I saw your edit. I added a sentence after it, and moved the link to the other article back to the end, so it would be more visible. Thanks for being the first (and so far only) contributor besides myself! ------------------------------------------------------- Sorry for the length of this post, folks. I am new to this forum, and I didn't see a way to reply to individual posts. Thanks again!!!