I hope I read it wrongly?
Japan Post suddenly announced that all EMS/SAL shipment from Japan to US weighing more than 453g will be suspended indefinitely effective from 17Nov apparently due to US restricting parcel shipment because of heighten terror threat.

How can this be??? If true, this is the last thing j-vinyl needs at this time when the strong yen is already hurting sales badly.

http://www.post.japanpost.jp/whats_new/2010/1112_02_c01.pdf

Yay! I can still get my capsule toy wins off of YJP! shipped over 1x1 at the awesome xchange rate of $1=50Y.. btw, heard a lot of good things about down-loadable vintage kaiju too.

Hmmm... I have a handful of Henshin Cyborg items and other odds and ends waiting in Japan via middleman. This sounds... problematic.

I didn't read the article cause I can't do PDF but I did read. (here SB maybe?) that EMS is being pressured by U.S. free trade concerns b/c EMS is supported by the State of Japan and UPS/Fed Ex are free market capitalists...

Sounds like we'll be using a lot more FedEx and DHL in the upcoming days. I can't imagine the impact this will have on all the online businesses (e.g., Hobbylink Japan) that sell to U.S. customers from Japan. Very few, particularly among the smaller shops, offer anything but EMS.

Someone on one of the places this was posted mentioned something about a 'preferred shipper' list deal for businesses. I don't know how true it was, but the implication was that this will be a much bigger deal for middleman services and YJA sellers than for places like HLJ. I'd love to get some more official word from our side of the pond. It doesn't seem like us potentially affected US customers should be hearing about this first from a half-garbled translation of the JP post website.

Celga posted this on their facebook this morning, hopefully its true. Im about to find out later this week when they ship my package.

"Notice: We have the special contract with Japanese Post Office and the new regulation doesn't apply for our packages. Please do not worry. (they say they would hold the packages to USA due to terror concerns, but, ours are fine.) "

http://www.post.japanpost.jp/int/inform ... /1112.html

Hmmm was thinking or ordering one toy (standard size- M1). Would this fall under the 453 g category? I'm going to wait till this clears otherwise. Stupid US government and their fake terror threats. It's all commerce, and has jack shit to do with that (terror) I'm sure.

This actually fills in a blank for me as to why YJA is pretty barren lately with listings.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the latest G20 meet where the US got slapped around.

Yeah "terrorism".

You reap what you sew.

F shit like this in the stinker, reminds me of when I was supposed to get a bunch of free dental work done to ease my pain and bamn closed due to swine flu threat, politicians can hang with there own red tape

This is going to be a serious thorn in my side. The weak dollar to yen conversion, no more EMS....ugh.

453 gram = 15.979 ounce
(I had to look that up)
This S U C K S !!!!

WHAT THE FUCKKKKKKKKK

So next question would be, who here has a postal scale and can way one (standard) size figure for me?

Well a standard size Marusan zilla weighs about 11 oz. without packing.
I ordered something from Mandarake and they switched to DHL.

Edit: They are still shipping EMS for smaller stuff. I checked a recent purchase for a small TE spider guy and it shipped via EMS for 1200 yen.

Does it say how much it costs to ship from JP to US using DHL? I wonder how many days it takes.

An RxH fig on Mandarake was 1600 yen shipping DHL. I think it was 3-4 days.

That's not bad. I tried to see what the shipping was on the DHL website for 1.5 lbs in a 12x6x6" box and it was saying 11749 yen then i tried 1 lb at 8x4x4" and it was 7680 yen. For DHL Express

I had Mandarake ship something DHL before, maybe 1-2 days logner to get to me then EMS, so yeah 3-4 days, pretty good.

lets hope a lot of these shops will then offer DHL now, or we are pretty much screwed.

This doesn't make any sense at all.

What next.
You won't be able to leave the United States?

Only if you weigh less than 100 lbs. Otherwise, you need a special contract with the airlines.

I just love how the US government (no matter who is in office) roll out that 'elevated terror threat' conveniently whenever the purpose suits them. Notice it around elections, trade summits, low approval ratings, etc etc etc etc etc. Then when I try to wrap my head around that, I think, wow who really who put these people in office? Oh yeah corporations.

well I guess I will be travelling as a siamese twin