Reunion

At long last! We have finally been reunited with our belongings!

Moving people to different countries is easy: just get a passport and away you go – sometimes at a moment’s notice. Moving a person’s stuff is quite a bit more involved. When Japan Luggage Express came to load all our boxes in a van and take them away, I was ecstatic. However, the feelings of “Good Riddance!” soon turned to longing once we got to Canada. I needed my stuff to bring familiarity to new surroundings.

Getting your non-essentials overseas and past the generous helping of international bureaucracy is a great test of resourcefulness and determination. I hope that my account of our epic quest to retrieve said items will prove useful to someone taking on the same challenge.

The first stop was Gillship Navigation to pay our invoice. Gillship Navigation took over our shipment from the Japanese shipping company somewhere along the way, bringing it to its eventual destination in Toronto. Their office is at 6205B Airport Rd. It looks simple on the map, but what they don’t tell you is that 6205 Airport Rd is actually a building complex with no signage whatsoever to indicate which buildings are which. There was a very small sign with the word “Visitors” by a ramp so we drove up there and found ourselves in an above-ground courtyard framed by buildings A and B. Once inside, we were greeted by our very friendly shipping agent who went over our paperwork and the process for picking up our boxes.

Next up was the Canada Border Services Agency (customs). Their office is in an industrial red brick building surrounded by chain link fence. Here, we were greeted by two very tall customs officers wearing bullet proof vests. I had to present my passport and our Packing List. My customs officer asked the usual questions: “Do you have any alcohol or tobacco products? Any new items? Any items for commercial use?” I answered “No” to all three and she proceeded to stamp each page of my Packing List.

Our final stop was the warehouse run by Oceanland Distribution Services Ltd. After a few minutes of driving around looking for it, we spotted the front door and pulled up to it. A sign on the door read “For shipment pick-up go to side door.” So around to the side door we went. A sign on the side door read “Do not enter.” We kept going and came to an entrance to the actual warehouse. The sign outside read “Restricted access.” So, working off the directive from the first sign, we ignored the restricted part and went inside. We walked down a makeshift hallway constructed of plywood barriers and past the staff lunch room before we came to a glass window with a woman sitting behind it. She asked to see my customs-stamped Packing List, charged me a $40 dock fee, gave me a form and then instructed us to “Drive your car around back to an above-ground loading door. Back into it. Show someone your form and they’ll bring your freight.”

We went “around back” and – almost like magic – someone was there to assist us. Equally magical, he disappeared inside the dark warehouse and reappeared moments later with our boxes loaded on a forklift. Such joy! Joe struggled to fit everything into the car while the man stood by and cheered him on (in a thick, Jamaican accent) with motivational phrases such as “Come on, Joey!” and “You can do it, Joey!” and “You’re still a young man, Joe!”

An international move pushes you into an intense encounter with everything you own. The pre-departure period put us at direct odds with our personal effects, especially when packing took a “square peg in a round hole” kind of turn. Between the two of us, Joe and I had 7 years of accumulated stuff that had to get from our apartments in Shizuoka, Japan to a then-unknown Toronto residence. The act of moving these earthly possessions took over two months from start to finish. The end result? Pure elation!