Customs, duty and tax when importing from Japan
Import charges are set by the country your parcel is going to, not by us or by the shop, and they are paid by the person receiving the parcel. This is the part of international shopping that surprises people most often, so it is worth understanding before you order rather than at the door.
Who charges what
A parcel entering your country can attract import duty, a sales tax such as VAT or GST, and a handling or clearance fee charged by the carrier for processing it. All three are separate from what you paid us, and none of them reach us — they are collected by your own customs authority and courier.
We deliberately do not publish threshold figures. They change without notice and differ by product category, and a stale number on a shipping site is worse than no number at all. Every destination page we publish links that country's own customs authority instead, which is the only source that stays right.
Declarations are accurate, always
Every parcel ships with a customs declaration stating what is inside and what it cost. We cannot mark an order as a gift, understate its value, or describe it as something else. False declaration is illegal for both of us, and it voids the carrier's insurance — so if the parcel is then lost, there is no claim to make.
This is worth knowing up front because it is a common request, and the answer does not change.
What actually reduces the charge
The legitimate levers are the shipment value and how it is split. Several smaller parcels sometimes fall under a threshold that one large parcel would exceed — but each parcel pays its own international shipping, so that trade is not automatically worth making.
Tell us the value you are comfortable with per parcel and we will pack to it where the shipping maths still makes sense.
Start shopping in Japan
Free to join, free Japanese address, and nothing to pay until you have something to ship.
Start shopping with us