waiting, waiting, waiting.
Most of them are due to arrive in Omaha today or tomorrow (or next Monday, depending on who I talk to). They are already over a week overdue because of some kind of trouble in LA, where they landed at a port after traveling over the ocean from Yokohama.
A normal person would probably have packed all the weapons, especially long pointy things, in one box and shipped it economically with the other zillion boxes for very little increase in cost. But between Moving Day #1, when the truck came to take stuff from our house in Tokyo to the port in Yokohama,and moving day #3, when we actually flew out of Japan, I had a kobudo demo and last practices with long pointy and non-pointy things. My daughter also needed some of her stuff for her last practices.
So I made a giant box out of littler boxes and put in naginata, spear (oops! one inch too long...no spear), sticks, lots- o - swords, etc) and sent that in advance with the other stuff. Then I made another giant box for the leftover stuff and brought it over as luggage (oh, they charge for oversized boxes now, even if within the baggage limit....). Of course I also snuck a few goodies into the suitcases. You know, nunchaku, tonfa, sai, pointy Klingon bagua weapons....
Somehow we got through the Tokyo and Minneapolis airports without them opening the giant weapon box. And the security people only searched one of our suitcases in our absence, one stuffed with clothes, not weapons. So the group of late weapons made it over safely.
I've had plenty of toys to play with these weeks in our new apartment in Kansas but it will be nice to get them all together again. And nicer to set up a little studio over here...
2 comments:
Oh yes, I'm with you on that issue. Customs in Germany so much annoyed me that I started to collect 2 sets of weaponry, one here in TW, the other one back in good old G. In the meantime, I've sent over 100 waxwoods to friends back home, also 5 blades from PRC, arriving in Europe on Jan. 2nd. Wondering about the customs. You got to pay import taxes in the US? And when I go back home, I need to bring around 20 real blades, wonder how to do it then.
Hermann, I am not planning to sell any of these in the US, so there is no customs charge. As for rules regarding live blades, that seems to vary country by country, so you would have to check with the German regulations on that. My live blade or shin ken was borrowed, so I didn't bring it into the US.
The rules in Japan are strange. Live blades are OK (of course they must be registered and licensed), but dull Chinese blades are not, because they are made of steel. The law says that if a magnet sticks to it, you cannot import it into the country. It does not matter if it is dull and couldn't cut a thing.
Anyway, good luck getting your things into Germany!
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