Finally, it’s off in the mail. I went to the FedEx shipping center in Fuchu, Tokyo today to drop it off.

Federal Express has a special standing offer to Americans living overseas: bring your absentee ballots to us, and we’ll ship them for you–free of charge. You have to drop it off at a manned station here in Japan, all of which are listed here (click on the location link for a map and phone numbers), but note that the free shipping offer is only good for FedEx offices in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka, and not in Tohoku or Hokkaido. For more details and instructions, call 0120-003-200 (toll free), or 043-298-1919.

I waited this long because I was waiting for a good-weather day when I had the chance to get things done. I decided to go to FedEx because, quite frankly, I didn’t want to trust the Japanese post office with this one, not after what they pulled with my request for my ballot: after paying extra to send it registered mail, it took them a month to deliver it, and an additional two months to send the receipt. No thanks to that. FedEx has Internet shipment tracking, and its free. And fast.

When you ship it at FedEx, they have you fill out the Air Waybill form. The rep there (who spoke English) expressed disappointment that I’d already sealed the envelope–she said she needed to staple one of the waybill copies to the ballot itself. However, seeing as how the envelope is signed and everything must be official, I’d have been more than a bit nervous having her put other stuff in there as well. As it was, she stapled the waybill to the edge of the official envelope.

They were prepared for a variety of eventualities, by the way–I had not brought the phone number of the Elections Office, which it turns out is needed for the waybill, but the rep had a list of all the phone numbers for all the election offices in the U.S., ready to go. Though I got the feeling that I was the first one to bring a ballot into that particular office…

I should be able to track it from tomorrow morning–I turned it in too late for today’s shipments. It’ll be good to know that the vote is on its way.