Wow, what a surprise. When we moved here in 2004, we had way too many things from the US, so we started paring down our belongings. We asked around to see if there was such a thing as Goodwill to whom we could donate them, but a colleague said that it was rather rare to find such an institution in Japan as Japanese tended to take care of themselves and not rely on anyone else's charity. We then called up our friends to see who wanted what, and after they had their picks, we simply left a whole lot of other things by the alternate door to our complex. We left for dinner and was surprised that an hour later back home, we found many things had disappeared; people had taken most away. We simply put the remaining in the dumpster.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when we decided not to bring our entire belongings and opted to do the traditionaSayonara Sale, a sort of garage sale staged by departing expatriates. I took pictures, posted them in an online site, advertised for the sale at the free weekly English magazine Metropolis, and within a day, calls started calling. It was a feeding frenzy, with people wanting to secure certain items, mainly the big ones, such as furniture. Each advertising renewal puts another fresh jolt to the bidding. It was fun to see the process. Had we known how wildly popular this was, we would have done this years ago when we wanted to get rid of some things.
Click HERE to go to the Sayonara Sale site.
