Bringing A Cat (or Dog) Into Japan
My wife and I brought our cat into Japan, and we still talk about the process a year later. We have a lot of recommendations and advice for people getting ready to move to Japan.
We moved to Japan last year, and we brought our cat with us. She’s an 18 year old rescue kitty, and a family member we love and adore.
The bottom line is: You can avoid quarantine by being proactive about the process. If you want to skip all the other recommendations I have here, just search through this post for quarantine and you can ignore all the rest. Quarantine is not good. It’s stressful for humans and pets. And Japan is such a detail oriented and operationally excellent country that, with enough time and some attentive project planning, you can avoid quarantine altogether.
You’re doing the most important thing first, which is getting information. Some of the sites that you’ll need are:
Resources you’ll need
The USDA web site (if you’re from the US, if not, you’ll want to find the equivalent in your home country): Pet travel from the U.S. to Japan
Equally if not more important is the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery (MAFF) web site in Japan: Home：動物検疫所 (link goes to their English page). This site will have all the requirements that you’ll have to satisfy to bring your pet into Japan.
An extremely competent veterinarian who has significant experience with the process. Our vet who is from Irvine happens to be multilingual and works with many expat families from all over the world, including Japan and South Korea, but she has quite literally helped people get their pets ready for travel to dozens of countries. I’ll post her name and contact on my Japaneur blog.
Efax Japan was an extremely helpful resource. You can sign up for an eFax Japan account at インターネットファックスの(e Fax)ホームページ and this, like it’s American counterpart eFax, gives you a Japanese fax number and allows you to send and receive faxes via PDF, and gives you time and date confirmation of successful transmissions on both sides, including their reception.
Feliway! (if you have a cat) Your vet will tell you about this. It’s fascinating! A pheremone type of spray you can use on the cat carrier inside. It actually calms cats down. We had a ton of other discoveries about which carrier to use, the best water dish for the flight, etc. I’ll post those on a future Japaneur blog post too as I find them and update this post.
Moving to Japan was a massive undertaking for us as a family, and my wife and I spent hundreds of hours planning and carrying out the plan. We started with a whiteboard in my home office and brainstormed, getting all of our worries and concerns out on paper. I’ll probably write several blog posts on my Japaneur blog about moving to Japan- it’s such a detailed process. In fact, we got to the point where we actually used project management software. I’m a tech in my day job, and I am partial to Mac, so I pulled out the application Omniplan and we went to work on creating a timeline we could both reference and stick to. This was essential.
Timing is critical: Get started way in advance
Critical point number 1: Give yourself ample time.
Being prepared can’t be rushed at the end. There are several timelines that need to be established and validated in writing. For example, for our cat we had to get two separate rabies vaccinations, both at very specific times. Additionally, we needed a specific certificate from a specific Japanese government (MAFF) approved laboratory that happens to be in Kansas. We started about nine months before moving, and that was too close for comfort for us. If I could do it all over again, I would have started one full year before moving.
Get your paperwork in perfect, 100% order
Critical point number 2: Have your paperwork in perfect order.
Nothing can be out of order. The timelines need to be met, the originals need to be ready and in-hand. The difference between being completely ready and not is massive: If one thing is wrong your pet can be kept in quarantine for months, which is arduous not only for the pet, but the pet’s owners are still responsible for feeding the pet on a daily basis during quarantine. The cost of mistakes is high, so flawless execution is essential.
Our veterinarian continuously checked the microchip we implanted in our cat with not only one ISO reader, but two different readers. In some cases a chip can become undetectable. For example, a chip can move. She wanted to make sure that the chip was readable by multiple readers, and validated that it responded for several weeks in a row, with each particular appointment we had, to make sure we could be confident that the chip would read at the US point of exit and at the Japanese point of entry (in our case, Kansai International Airport, KIX, in Osaka).
One really important note that we didn’t realize right away is that all the forms that need to be completed for the Japanese are online, even though the English web site only references PDFs. You’ll also need a Windows-based PC with Internet Explorer on it, because the MAFF web site forms are only compatible with Internet Explorer (as of 2017). I tried Firefox, Chrome and Safari on MacOS, and none of them would work properly. I do tech support for private clients for a living, and I’ve seen this quite frequently with government and banking web sites, and more so in Japan. You can use a virtual machine on a Mac, (I recommend VMWare Fusion Professional) and Windows 7–10 will work fine. Or you can do what I did and use a spare PC if you have one handy. This is literally the only use we’ve had for the PC in years.
Be in contact with the agriculture (animal) immigration department at the airport
The professionals from immigration in Japan are awesome.
Whoever speaks Japanese in your household should be in contact with the airport in Japan. They do speak some English as well, but I recommend speaking with them in Japanese.
You will be required to give them advanced notice in writing (typically via fax, but if they welcome email you can do that too). My wife and I were stunned by how approachable and professional, welcoming and helpful they were. We first called at around 1AM JST (Japan Time) while we were in the Pacific Time Zone, and thought we’d get an answering machine. They have a team working around the clock 24/7/365.
Each time we called they knew who we were, no matter who answered the phone. Their internal communication isn’t unlike the Ritz Carlton or another fine hotel. They are operationally excellent and on top of things.
That said, put your paranoid project manager hat on always and don’t take it off. Just because they said we could email them didn’t stop me from faxing and emailing - both. And when we send emails we would often forward efax confirmations- not in an aggressive manner, but making sure that we demonstrated to them that we were working hard and on top of our responsibilities.
The payoff of flawless execution: Entry so smooth it will blow your mind
We brought our cat over to the MAFF immigration counter, and waited behind one other traveler who was moving back to Japan.
We were greeted professionally, presented our paperwork, they read the microchip in our cat, and we were welcomed into Japan. That was it! 15 minutes. I couldn’t believe it. It was almost anti-climactic.
There are more things that will come to mind and I’ll update my blog with them as I remember them. Your question makes me wish I had taken more notes! The other issues will come to mind and I’ll write updates as I recall them.
I’m Japaneur on Japaneur (@japaneur) | Twitter and on Japaneur (@japaneur) • Instagram photos and videos and I write all about Japan culture, travel and life on my Blog.
Here’s a picture of me and my cat taken shortly before the move. We’re browsing instagram together:
