28,300 yen

28,100 yen. That's currently $233. However, since 100 yen spends more like 1 dollar than the 80 cents that the exchange rate would have you believe, it feels like $281.

So...$281. That's a lot of scratch. In fact, that's more than my entire paycheck from Nishi that I got today.

However, apparently, that's how much it costs to ship a box that's 22.2 kg to America. Ah, but see...that's how much it costs to send it home via EMS or express mail which will get it home in a week. It's only 11,000 yen ($110) to send it by ship. Less than half. Awesome, right?

Well...it would have been, except for no apparent reasons, you can't send a box bigger than 2 meters in volume on a ship. Why? I have no clue. You would think that they would rather send the bigger boxes by ship instead of airplane. I mean, aren't we always hearing about how much fuel costs for airplanes so they keep trying to reduce weights on all flight? Grrr....

If you haven't guessed, Chris and I went to the PO today expecting to spend $110 on a package to America. Instead, when we get there, this really snippy woman snaps that my box is too heavy to send. I just blink at her. We JUST set it down on a counter, not a scale. There is no way that she knows how heavy it is. But she just keeps telling me it's too heavy. "We can't ship anything over 30 kg!" she keeps barking at me. I frown and snap back that it's only "22.2 kg". She gives me a super skeptical look and checks her computer again.

Then she gets a satisfied look on her face and snaps that it's too big. I have to say, she looked a little pleased to defeat me. She measures our box and it's over the 2 meter limit. So she runs and gets a little form for EMS and says that we have to send it this way. Apparently it's the fastest way to ship things (which sucks since we were all for the slowest way possible). She gives me no other options and doesn't even let me ask about the other types of shipping. By this time, Chris and I just give up and fill out the form. At the moment, we have no idea how much it will cost but assume it's going to be twice as much. We also are trying to send a box of books home (which come in nifty mail bags, this one is extra nifty with buckles and stuff...looks like an army duffel bag) so we just fill out both of the forms.

This takes forever as they fart around in the back room doing who knows what. The rude lady has passed us off to another employee who looked like he hadn't a clue about what's going on. He comes back with a number on a little scrap of paper. Then he says the total "san man yon sen hyaku en" and looks at us expectantly. That's 34100 yen ($341). We were boggled but by this time we've been standing in the hot post office for about 40 minutes and just want to go. Luckily we have just enough (seriously, I had $291 and Chris has another $50 in his wallet so we could afford the ridiculous price.

And you, the biggest suck factor in this whole story is that I think we got ripped off because we are foreign and no one wanted to take the time to talk to us like we were real people. Usually we don't have much problems regarding this, but it was really bad today. The woman was so hostile to me from the very beginning and treating me like I was stupid. Lame! That really really sucks.

Bah! This has not been a good week for living in Japan. Seriously. We are definitely ready to come home, if you can't tell. And we only have one more box to ship (which we will NOT be using the Post Office for). Hopefully there won't be many more annoyances before we leave.

Grumpy!