A mailbox service (known in Japanese as “shishobako”) generally refers to a post office box. Once you apply in advance, your mail is placed in a dedicated box installed inside a post office.
With this service, mail is not delivered to your home or office; instead, you go to the post office with a key, collect your mail, and take it home yourself. There is also another type, the private mailbox, which is a mail-receiving service run by private companies.
Post office box services are offered not only in Japan but also overseas. Whether in Japan or abroad, when you use a post office box, mail can be delivered with only the recipient’s name, the post office name and the box number written on it. A similar way of receiving mail is “hold at a post office” (kyokudome). With hold at a post office, an address is written on the item, but the mail is not delivered to the home. A post office box, on the other hand, differs in that the user’s address is not needed: mail arrives as long as it has the recipient’s name, the post office name and the box number.
A private mailbox sets up a place to receive mail at a location different from your own address, and has a person stationed there to receive your mail. Imagine a parcel locker located somewhere other than your home, with people who handle things for you. Private mailbox services are run by private businesses, so they are also convenient for receiving parcels from carriers other than Japan Post.
Differences Between a Post Office Box and a Private Mailbox
Differences in the Conditions for Use
There are two kinds of mailboxes: post office boxes and private mailboxes. Post office boxes are installed in post offices. A post office box can be used free of charge. To use one, you apply to and sign a contract with a Japan Post Co., Ltd. post office. However, there are several conditions for using it, as follows.
- Mail must arrive almost every day, and exceed a certain volume
- When forwarding several pieces of mail together under the Basic Plan, use the presence of the “1cm exceeded ◆ mark” on the Mybox inbox screen as a guide for how much to enclose.
- You must always be able to come and collect your mail
- The period of use must be at least six months
Because of these conditions, post office boxes are mostly limited to TV and radio broadcasters, mail-order companies, publishers and businesses running sweepstakes of some kind. Only a limited number of businesses that receive mail every day can use them. Private mailboxes, on the other hand, have conditions that differ from one provider to another.
By law, every provider must carry out the following four checks: verifying identity, keeping records of identity verification, keeping transaction records, and reporting suspicious transactions. However, unlike post office boxes, private mailboxes have no restrictions based on the number of incoming items.
Differences in Services
There is no charge for using a post office box. After meeting the conditions above, you apply at a post office and receive a key for the box. You then simply go to the post office’s box corner with the key to collect the mail delivered to the post office.
Points to note are that you must collect your mail yourself, and that what is delivered must be standard-size mail.
Therefore, in addition to the conditions above, using a post office box also requires that senders use standard-size mail. This is why many entries to sweepstakes addressed to a post office box are made on postcards.
Using a private mailbox involves a fee. However, it offers services that post office boxes do not. First, it can accept items that are not standard-size mail. Registered mail, packages and parcels from courier companies can also be received, so there is no need to specify that items be sent as standard-size mail.
Some providers also offer a service that forwards the mail they have received to another location. You may not see much point in forwarding an item that has already been received once. However, depending on how you use it, it can be a very effective approach.
Another feature is that many private mailboxes are set up so that you cannot tell from the address that it is a mailbox. Many providers of these services receive their clients’ mail at an ordinary office. This means people can send mail to an address written in the same way as an ordinary residence or office.
Actually Using a Private Mailbox
There are many ways to use a private mailbox. Even as an individual, you can use it for personal purposes or for business, and a company can sign a corporate contract and use it for its business.
Here are some concrete examples of how a mailbox can be used.
Examples of Personal Use (for People Living in Japan)
If you live in Japan, you can usually receive your mail at your home address. However, not everyone can necessarily receive mail at home. Also, having mail sent to your home means telling the other party where you live. Nowadays, anyone can easily look up a place once they know the address, so having your home address and name known could lead to some kind of trouble.
For Receiving Mail
We receive a lot of mail every day. But with more and more single-person households, it is not always possible to be home to receive items. Items that could not be delivered are held at a depot or a post office. Normally, you then have to pick them up yourself with a notice of absence, or request redelivery. However, sometimes the redelivery timing does not work out and you cannot receive the item, or you miss the notice of absence and the item is returned to the sender.
By using a private mailbox, you can be sure your items are received. After that, you can go and pick them up from the private mailbox whenever it suits you.
Avoiding the Risk of Mail Being Stolen
Mail is normally delivered into a mailbox at your home. Mailboxes come in various shapes, but with an old red mailbox or one with just a simple lid, people who do not live there can take out the mail inside.
For women living alone, for example, personal information can be leaked through mail theft. Mail that arrives while you are out is taken out and opened without permission, and its contents checked. In some cases, the mail is even resealed and put back so that the theft goes unnoticed.
The frightening thing about this method is that you may not notice your mail has been taken.
Some people may think their mailbox has a lock, so they are safe. However, even with a locking mailbox, mail can be pulled out by inserting something like bamboo tongs through a gap. The way to avoid this kind of damage is to set up a place to receive mail other than your home, such as a private mailbox.
With a private mailbox, a person receives your mail at a place away from your home, so this kind of theft can be prevented. Items received at a private mailbox can be picked up by you in person, or, when forwarded from the private mailbox, they can be sent on hold at a post office, so that you can pick them up yourself at your nearest post office.
By using a private mailbox in this way, you can prevent personal information from leaking through your mail.
Setting Up a Dedicated Address for Transactions
Unlike in the past, person-to-person sales on websites are now very popular, and this is one reason people want to use a private mailbox. Today you can buy many products through apps and sites. At the same time, it has become easy to sell products through such tools too.
Some of these services let you trade without exchanging your own and the other party’s address and name. However, when sending by regular mail, you have to exchange addresses and names directly. In the past, addresses were written only in school rosters or company directories. So the people who knew your address were at least people you knew, such as relatives, friends, acquaintances, classmates and coworkers. Today, addresses are rarely published in rosters because of personal information protection. On the other hand, with the development of the internet, we have more and more chances to give our address to many people, including people we have never met.
Naturally, the trading partner receives your address, your name and the type of item exchanged. In some cases, the purpose is not to exchange goods but to obtain this information.
There is also a possibility that the information exchanged is compiled into a list and circulated. And if your address becomes known, some people may look it up out of curiosity. Receiving mail at a different address so that your home address does not leak is also a kind of security measure.
Receiving Mail While Protecting Your Privacy
If you live in a dormitory, for example, all your mail may be received at the dorm. In that case, everything that can be known without opening the mail, such as what arrived and who sent it, may be visible to the dorm manager or head.
Living in a dormitory means living with people you also share activities with outside the dorm, such as at school or work. It is not very desirable for such people to know information about your mail.
Even if you live at home rather than in a dorm, there may be mail you do not want your family to know about. To protect your privacy, you can use a private mailbox as a second address, pick up your mail yourself, or have forwarded mail held at a post office, so you can receive your mail without other people in the dorm noticing.
When You Cannot Use Your Home Address for Some Reason
In daily life, an address and a phone number are essential information. You probably write your address for various registrations often, and an address is needed for documents from government offices. However, there can be situations where, for some reason, you cannot receive documents at that address.
The first case is when you have an address but cannot go back to your home. For example, you may have escaped from home because of domestic violence (DV), or you may have been living with a partner, broken up, cannot return to the address on your resident record, and are temporarily staying with a friend. In such situations, it can be a problem if mail arrives at your home.
The second case is when you have an address but are almost never at that home. For example, an athlete who is constantly moving around the country and living in team dormitories and hotels day to day may be unable to receive mail. If someone at home can receive and forward your mail, that may be fine, but if not, using a mailbox service may be one solution.
When You Could Use Your Home Address but Would Rather Not
For anonymous delivery and receiving returns on Mercari or Yahoo Auctions, or when applying for samples or requesting brochures, using your home as the receiving address may not cause real trouble but can become a bit of a hassle. For example, if you apply for a cosmetics sample, you will naturally receive sales calls and direct mail afterward. If the company is unscrupulous, your personal information may be passed to other companies and all sorts of direct mail may arrive. Door-to-door sales visits are also common. As the saying goes, nothing is more expensive than something free; when you get something for free, the other party gains something from it too. If you are fed up with pushy sales and door-to-door selling, using the address and phone number of a private mailbox means such sales approaches will no longer reach you.
You may also want to request materials from a competitor. In that case, giving your name and address to another company can be very risky. If you use social media, it is easy to find out your school or current workplace. If you have an unusual surname, your home may be identified from such information. By using a mailbox address unrelated to you, you can reduce these risks.
As an Address for Receiving Items for Various Activities
Today is the easiest time in history for many people to broadcast their own content. Such broadcasting has become possible because posting and viewing information online is easy, because smartphones let us connect to the internet instantly, and because smartphones have cameras, so images and videos are easy to shoot.
The most typical example is YouTubers. Because individuals can easily upload videos, “video” content has spread rapidly. Whatever you want to do, you can now learn how by watching a video instead of reading text. According to a survey conducted in August 2019, “video creators such as YouTubers” ranked in the top three future careers for both junior high school boys and high school boys. For junior high school girls and high school girls, “entertainers such as actors, singers and voice actors” ranked in the top three for both.
Simply shooting a video is something even a junior high school student can do. And if you fund it yourself, anyone willing to put in the effort can do idol activities. Streaming video and presenting something in front of people are now things anyone can do, and have become familiar.
However, one problem arises when you carry out activities as a video streamer or a self-produced idol: how people can contact you. For simple communication, social media direct messages would work. But for receiving items sent to you, a proper address is needed. In some cases, you may not want the people you live with to know about such activities. In that case, it is a good idea to use a second address as your receiving address.
It is also a good idea to use a second address such as a private mailbox as the address you give to an unspecified number of people. In these activities, you may need to receive fan letters, opinions, gifts and sweepstakes entries by mail. Using your home address for this is very dangerous. By using a private mailbox, you can carry out such activities while avoiding trouble.
For Clubs and Group Activities Too
The same applies when a group such as a club, rather than an individual, carries out some activity. There are many clubs in the world, such as fan-made publication circles, study groups, theater and film groups. Such activities may involve exchanging mail frequently. However, if the organizer lives alone and is away from home during the day, it can be hard to manage the mail. In such cases, if you publicize a mailbox address as the shared address, club members can go and collect the mail themselves at the mailbox location even when the organizer is not there.
Using your home address when communicating with many people is very dangerous. Also, for group activities, you need a shared place to receive mail so as not to burden one person. A private mailbox is one way to do this.
Examples of Personal Use (for People Living Overseas)
Some people may think that if you live overseas, there is no need to set up a private mailbox in Japan, and that you should instead set up a post office box at a post office abroad. However, when you live overseas, a private mailbox can be useful in many situations.
Using It as a Japanese Address
Not many people go about daily life assuming that mail will be sent overseas. If you are communicating within Japan, there is no need to use international mail. However, many people live overseas today. It may seem that they have few chances to deal with Japan. But now that the internet is widespread, even people who are not in Japan remain closely connected to Japan, and in many situations a Japanese address is needed.
A Receiving Address for Mail Order That Only Serves Japan
Most mail-order businesses operating in Japan limit their sales area to Japan. While living overseas, you may badly want to buy a product sold by a Japanese mail-order company. Even if you negotiate, you may be told “we cannot ship overseas.” That is where a private mailbox can be used.
Some mailbox services forward what they receive. When you buy from a Japanese mail-order company, you use the private mailbox’s address as the delivery address. The mailbox first receives the item, and then forwards it overseas. This way, you can buy products from Japanese mail order even while you are abroad.
A Place to Receive Mail While Studying Abroad or Staying Overseas Long-Term
Some people give up their home temporarily to study abroad. Others are posted overseas for years and leave their home empty for a long time. In such cases, your mail may have nowhere to go. Or, even if you keep or rent your home, mail may keep piling up in your mailbox. Non-standard-size mail may all be returned to the sender.
A pile of mail is also undesirable from a security standpoint. Piled-up mail shows anyone that the residents have been away from home for a long time. If a house is empty with nothing inside, the damage may not be so great. But if furniture and other belongings are left inside while the house is vacant for a long time, it can become a target for burglars. In some cases, the possibility of a suspicious person breaking in and settling there cannot be ruled out.
Another reason a pile of mail is undesirable is also security related. The signal that no one is home can make the house a target for arson. Some arsonists set fire after seeing many flyers in a bicycle basket. If a mailbox is full of mail and flyers, someone may set fire to those. To prevent such damage, you should avoid letting mail pile up in your mailbox.
The way to solve these problems is a private mailbox that receives your mail while you are staying overseas. With a private mailbox, you can receive mail even during periods when you have no address in Japan. Mail will also not pile up at your home.
Lowering Shipping Costs When Sending Several Parcels from Overseas
A private mailbox is also convenient as a place to receive items when you return to Japan from a stay abroad. You return to Japan, but items you sent may arrive before you get back home, which can be a real problem. Since the sender is overseas, once the items are returned there, it is very difficult to get them back. Also, since you will look for and rent a home after returning to Japan, you may need a temporary receiving address. A private mailbox is useful in these cases too.
You may also want to send parcels to many places in Japan, for example souvenirs to relatives. Sending items individually to each address could make shipping costs very high. In some cases, it is far cheaper to send everything to Japan as one large parcel and then split it into smaller parcels for delivery within Japan. Using a private mailbox is one way to do this. Some mailbox providers specialize in this kind of mail exchange with overseas. Such services may repack the items into smaller parcels in Japan and then forward them.
Using a Private Mailbox for Business
So far we have explained how to use a mailbox as an address other than a person’s home. But addresses are not only used for personal homes. Offices have addresses too. Various kinds of mail arrive at an office every day, such as items from business partners and notices from public agencies. Therefore, to do business you need an address and a place where you can receive mail.
When an Individual Runs a Business
Today, some people work as freelancers without belonging to a company, and some run a company by themselves. As attitudes toward work change and more people start businesses, many people work at home or in cafes rather than going to a fixed office. Others run a business on the side, apart from their main job. SOHO businesses and side businesses are no longer rare.
Even if the business is small, you still need an address and must receive mail.
In such a situation, you can either use your home address or use an address other than your home. If you use your home address, nothing special is required: you simply write your home as the business location and have mail sent there. However, this can cause some trouble. Depending on your line of work, your home address may become known to an unspecified number of people. If your home is also your office, people may visit even on your days off. It is also not good for business partners to know where you live. In some cases, competitors may even harass you at home. Using your home address as your office address carries the risk of such trouble.
Then you might think you could simply use a place other than your home as your office. For example, some people work in coffee shops these days. Coworking spaces are also increasing. Some people even work inside theme parks. For people who can work as long as they have a desk, a chair and a laptop, that may be enough. But it causes problems for receiving mail. You can rent a small space in a rental office and also borrow an address in its name. Still, some people may find the cost does not work out.
A private mailbox can be used in such cases too. The issues are mail and the office address. Some private mailbox services specialize in this kind of business use. Receiving mail and borrowing an address in a business’s name do not cost very much. The cost is far lower than renting an office and staying there. Some services also convert faxes into PDF files and forward them by email. Being able to use these without buying office equipment such as a fax machine or phone is another attraction.
If you run a side business, there may also be situations where, for some reason, using your home address is not a good idea. In such cases too, using a private mailbox as a second address is effective.
As the Address of an E-Commerce Site and a Place to Receive Returns
When surfing the internet, you will notice there are a great many online shops. Some people run a business making products at home and sending them by mail. Shipping out items is no problem, since you can ask the post office or a courier. However, running such a business raises a problem: where to receive returns, and the fact that, under commercial law, you must display the business operator’s address in transactions.
Listing your home as your office causes several problems: privacy, credibility, and your rental contract.
To run an online shop, you must display the operator’s name and address. So if your home is your office, your name and home address can be viewed by anyone on the internet. Your line of business also becomes known, so you are disclosing quite a lot of personal information to an unspecified number of people. The more the information spreads, the higher the chance of trouble.
The second problem, credibility, is that your business may be taken lightly. Today, if you know an address, you can easily look up what kind of building it is. If the address is clearly an ordinary residence, the other party may not trust you. When looking at an online shop to buy something, some people judge from this whether the seller really provides reliable products. If the address shown is in a building in the city center, for example, buyers will feel safe buying.
The third is the rental contract problem. If the property you want to register as an office is contracted for residential use only, you cannot use that address as an office. Using it without permission is very likely to cause trouble. On the other hand, moving house for a side business or an online shop you are about to start would be very costly. Using a mailbox as your office address, without changing your current living situation much, can cut costs significantly.
To Run Your Current Business More Comfortably
A mailbox is also very convenient if your current business handles a very large amount of mail. For example, a company that handles recruitment on behalf of others may receive large numbers of application forms by mail. A marketing business may also receive large numbers of questionnaires from consumers. If such mail arrives at your office, it gets mixed with regular mail and may interfere with normal work. By setting up a separate place to receive it, you can keep your work running smoothly.
It can also be used as the address for sweepstakes entries. A post office box is fine for long-running sweepstakes or reader-letter collection, but for one-off campaigns that do not continue for six months or more, a private mailbox is one option.
What Using a Mailbox Means
A mailbox also means having a second address. Today, it is easy to have several phone numbers and email addresses. In the same way, having several addresses offers very large benefits for both personal and business use.
Realistically, however, the cost of keeping several addresses would not be worthwhile. A mailbox is a second address you can use at relatively low cost. Why not start by checking what services are available, and find the type of mailbox that is easiest for you to use?
