We'll I purchased another item off the B/S forum, and the seller shipped it via USPS.
"Status: Missent"
Somehow it ended up in a post office 2 hours south of me, , glad I'm not in any desperate rush for it. I'm telling you guys, with USPS I have the worst luck.
Just to throw in my 2¢ the United States Postal Service (AKA Snail-Mail, AKA USPS) has an international Air Mail service that's pretty close (-0/+3) to the same speed as UPS, FedX and so on but costs about half that of a private service.
The crammy jammed up holidaze may be different but where UPS takes 7 days and FedX 6 (for their "overnight" service), Snail Mail gets from the USA to Japan in almost always less than 10 days. And UPS (for example) is $50, FedX is $75 and SnailMail is $30 (roughly speaking). There used to be a great private carrier out of somewhere in China called "TNT" (or was it T&T ?) that was faster than all of them and about the same price as US Snail-Mail.
im glad i could bring some entertainment this holiday season