We hired a Japanese moving company [video]
I was a professional mover for a number of years in a wealthy area in the US (Fairfield County, CT), so moving people from McMansion to McMansion, back and forth between Manhattan, etc. People movin&#x27; on up, and sometimes way way down. All their &quot;priceless&quot; stuff.<p>Best job I ever had, lots of skill involved. I ponder starting my own company sometimes. Great tips, lots of free stuff, new faces everyday, great workout. I could write a sitcom from all the crazy stories. You get a deep glimpse into people&#x27;s lives. Imagine rooting around people&#x27;s attics, digging into forgotten closets. Very stressful and emotional for lots of people as well, leaving houses they&#x27;ve been in for 40 years, divorces, foreclosures, you name it. I started as a grunt and eventually helped pack trucks here and there after a few years. A more strategic, infinitely variable form of 3d Tetris. Furniture moving is one of those unexpectedly &quot;deep&quot; jobs that can be done passably by some college kids and a truck when you&#x27;re moving out of your first crappy rental, but has a true logistical slant to it when grand pianos and sculptures are involved.<p>Anyway I have no cultural Japanese basis to look at this from, but they used a <i>ton</i> of disposable packaging. Looks like a lot of unnecessary flash and sizzle in general, e.g. using tablets when a notepad and shorthand is plenty enough to do such estimates. &quot;Protecting&quot; the walls it looks like? Not necessary and would only prevent the most superficial dings, which we would have patched up in the rare event we dinged a wall anyway. That looked like a 2-3 person one day job as well (packing, loading, delivering, and home early) and they looked to have 5-6 people working there. I thought our approaches were pretty wasteful but in comparison it was mostly the bare minimum tape and boxes and wrapping paper. We used furniture blankets&#x2F;pads much more liberally. All kinds of &quot;origami&quot;-type wrapping techniques (ironically?).<p>Not to hate! Just noting some cultural differences perhaps.