Okay, today is the day that our stroopwafel maker arrived. I had to go to Kansai airport to arrange the customs and pickup. If we would ask the shipping agent to do the work, it would cost another ¥24,000, and it would probably take a lot longer.

After taking the kids to school, I took my smallest son Colin (2 and a half years old) to Kansai airport. In Kansai Airport we went to the international Cargo area. We had to register and got a tag. One tag for me, one for little Colin and one for the car. Finding the building was not that easy. The buildings in the Cargo area are not marked very well. After asking around a few times, we ended up at the right building. In the building we had had to go to 3-02 International Express. Funny… the offices were not numbered… Probabably one of those security measures. We asked another 2 more times in the building and reached our destination.

We picked up the shipping papers which took a few seconds. I enquired after their door-to-door fees, which took about 10 minutes to get the answer completely spelled out on a piece of handwritten paper.

Off to the customs

The customs officers were all very friendly and it looked as if they had nothing to do. They were all sitting idle at their desks, or chatting. One of the officers took charge of me and guided me line by line how to fill out the form. It was only 2 forms, and would take only a minute or two if you know what you are doing. The customs officer took his time and guided me and all in all it took about 20 minutes, while little Colin was enjoying himself with some pencils and paper. One of the officers offered him some candies, so he had a great time. The calculated tax was only a ¥2500… Peanuts…

Then I finally could pick up the goods at JAL Cargo. I handed in the papers, signed my name and wrote down my vehicle number. The charges were ¥972. (where do they always get these funny numbers) A few minutes later a man delivered the box to my car and all was done.

All in all, we spent ¥3500 and another ¥4500 on toll charges to the airport.

At home we unpacked the box and read the instructions. It was all in German, but there were not many instructions. We had to prime the waffle maker, by heating it up for 1 hour, while using cooking oil three times at 10 minutes interval, to get rid of all the machine oil lubricants.

I had a business meeting after that, so no time to start experimenting’