Strange question on shipping
 

So this is a question for residents of Japan, I am currently in a dilemma my friend wants a decorative Katana from Japan so I go and drop about 10,000 yen on one for him and go to the post office with it all packed up nice and pretty. The clerk measures it and measures it and says its to big, so as I'm walking out she's like wait you could send it EMS but then she checks and says Japan Post does not ship such a thing (even though I told her 6 times it wasn't real >.<) So I go to DHL they want 13,000 yen to ship it and FedEx is near the same, Do you guys have any suggestions? I can't bring myself to pay 13,000 yen to ship something that light weight and not that big! I miss the US postal service.

I wish I could give you some productive tips but it seems like the Post Office is the cheapest one.

Is it in the cardboard box?

where are you sending it to? despite being decorative, there is a chance customs will stop it...

I'm sending it to the US, there shipped all the time and its not on the prohibited items list, you can check it on an airplane but that requires you to be flying.

well, in that case I would suggest using sea-based mailing... could take upto 3months, but will save maybe 90%

the problem is I don't know where to find sea based mailing, Japan post doesn't do it and neither do DHL or the others I looked at, and since I don't have a cargo container full of them the big companies aren't interested >.<, he better love this

The US postal service no longer allows sea post. They ended the service a year or more ago. You can`t send it by sea no matter how much you`d like to. It`s not an issue with the Japanese postal service - apparently it`s a "terrorism" one.

Also, it`s technically illegal at this point in time to mail a weapon of any type - including decorative - to the US without some sort of permit. When it comes to swords, as it is currently illegal to remove the real things from Japan, you`ll also have to prove that it is a replica at practically every step of the way. (People try to smuggle the real thing out as a "replica" all the time.)

You`re going to have to go through a lot of pain to send something like this.