Daniele B

Guys, the reply of AOI is not correct, probably they are referring to the declaration to the local customs, made by the customer due the resctriction in his/her country, but they perfectly know that for export legally a sword out of Japan some documents from bunkacho are necessary and they can't send a nihontou with the authorization issued only for real nihontou and write on the package that it is a replica. About DHL, about 3 years ago it was still possible, then the only available one was FedEx and as said now they quit their service, too. I have some contact inside DHL, they said a couple of weeks ago that the only exception that they can do could be in the case of very high value shipments/quantity, but we are talking of many many money, not the usual prices (I guess because they could earn more money from the fees and reserve a flight or a container only for a shipment).

Hello guys, I had some chat with sales managers of both FedEx and EMS Japan. Sadly I must confirm that FedEx will not accept any kind of sword from Japan and they don't do any exception to this. They said the they are aware that this is a big issue for customers and sellers and that they are going to lose many clients but this is their decision until some update. For EMS, as said above, for certain countries it still works, but the don't assure that the sword will be accepted in the destination country. Marius says that for France is ok but I've been told that France, Swiss and Italy are in the same situation and at the moment, in a short list of countries where I wanted to ship they said that the only one for which they accept the shipment (in other words, they let the package left Japan) is UK, but can't assure for the UK customs. The problem is not only the direct flight thing, because I've tried to ship a wakizashi directly from Tokyo in Italy (supposed direct flight), going there from my place (Hamamatsu, about 250km far!) but after two days a manager (not a postman) came to my house with my wakizashi and a lot of gomennasai... Marius, are you referring to very recent shipments? Because until the end of november I've sent swords in France, but recently things seems changed. If yes please let me know. However I'm investigating this and probably there is courrier that could solve this problem, I'll let you know when I'll ship the next sword (but now is very difficult buy and sell with these doubts about shipping...)

My posts were lost due the passage to the new forum but however I'll try to do a short resume: I'm in Japan and in the last years I have sent swords in Europe with EMS and DHL. As you know DHL doesn't accept swords on their flight from two-three years ago and EMS is not always ok because seems that a direct flight and some other things that we can read in this topic are necessary. So I have started to send with FedEx and I was quiet satisfied with the service (not with the prices of course). The last shipment with FedEx (to France) was the 25 november of the last year. Today I've tryed to send another one in Italy and I must sadly confirm to you all that it's true that FedEx doesn't accept to send swords out from Japan from this year. I'll try to send this one with EMS and I'll update here.

Thank you, just logged with the new format but it seems way better than before! Good job!