After receiving my tracking information for a recently shipped (EMS Express) bunch of auction winnings, I browsed around on JapanPost’s website to try to find out why after the Dec 24th entry in the tracking, there was no more movement.

Am I reading their site correctly that they are closed on Saturday and Sunday?  Is that just the offices, or does movement of the mail just stop on those days?  I guess my issue was due to shipment being initiated on Dec 23 and processed out on the 24th.  Apparently Christmas is also a national holiday in Japan, so the post office was closed, and if they’re also closed on weekends, there goes 3 days of nothing.

So I guess if packages don’t move on weekends, it would be a good idea to check the Japanese national holidays against the calendar if you are looking at EMS Express as a shipping option.  If you can do without insurance and tracking (and I had no problems with my first winnings just using 1st Class Air), EMS Express may not be worth the expense if your packages are just going to sit around for a few days before actually leaving the country.  7-day delivery due to holiday isn’t worth the probably extra $30 it cost in shipping vs 9-day delivery with 1st Class Air (which is how fast my first purchase arrived).

This isn’t a complaint against EMS Express service, JapanPost in general, or even KuboTEN.  I’m just saying, based on KuboTEN’s hours of operations, as well as the holiday schedule and operating hours of JapanPost, buyers should calculate their shipping options accordingly.

Oddly, the package showed up again today, 5 days later, arriving in New York.  I guess I was surprised at the route it took to get to the US, or at least the lack of tracking hops between Fukuoka and NYC.