Sending flowers to afar

December 16, 2008 6:11 AM

How I can send flowers to Japan from Canada?

I'm at a loss here, so I asked some of my friends and since the MetaFilter community helped me many times already, I thought I'll also ask here.

My girlfriend's birthday is coming up soon and I would like to send her flowers. The problem is I'm in Canada and she's in Japan.

I found a few flower shops in the town where she lives, but then I ask myself how I can order them, if they will deliver them, and if they will accept a Canadian credit card over the phone. (I didn't get a good read at their Web sites yet.)

Is there anyone who has ever done such a thing before? Any advice would be great. Thank you all in advance!

posted by remi to shopping (8 comments total)

I don't think you can send flowers international. They would either be rejected via customs or die on the way there. I would try to contact local flower shops first. They should be able to deliver.
posted by Mastercheddaar at 6:17 AM on December 16, 2008

FTD's international delivery to Japan.
posted by modernnomad at 6:26 AM on December 16, 2008

Interflora.
posted by Dr.Pill at 6:32 AM on December 16, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Just go into a local flower shop with the address and tell them you want to send flowers. You can pay right there and they'll take care of the rest. I believe this happens through the FTD network modernnomad linked.
posted by pocams at 7:00 AM on December 16, 2008

I have used and recommended Proflowers many times and they've always provided great customer service. A friend of mine recently used them to ship to Costa Rica from the U.S. and said the reps were very helpful.
posted by tyrantkitty at 11:06 AM on December 16, 2008

I've sent flowers to Japan from the US using Flora2000. It looks like they take orders from Canada too. They were quick, affordable, and sent beautiful flowers (so I'm told, I never did see them).

I was happy with their service. And most importantly, they send flowers to almost everywhere in Japan. Some of the other services I checked out only had delivery in the major cities. I was able to have flowers delivered to Ise the next day. They can even do same day delivery in some circumstances.
posted by Arbac at 11:09 AM on December 16, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I've used FTD to send flowers to Japan from the U.S. It's really convenient, if a bit costly.
posted by edjusted at 3:13 PM on December 17, 2008

Thank you all for your suggestions, but I have to give a golden star to my friend to referred me to a Japanese Web site.

If any of you wants to know, I ordered roses online at Rose Factory. The Web site is in Japanese only. I just happen to be able to read the language, but if you can't, I'm sure you can get someone to walk you through.

FTD can also deliver flowers to Japan. Emphasis on "deliver." They are shipped from the US to Japan, so the shipping alone costs a fortune. I would have cost me more than $200 CAD to send flowers to Japan with FTP, compared to only $50 CAD (around 4,000 Japanese yens) to order them from a flower shop in Japan. The service at Rose Factory was excellent: my girlfriend received the flowers just one day after I ordered them!
posted by remi at 8:16 AM on December 19, 2008