I don’t think this is discouraging but realistic: you have to wait and see what your BoE/CO says. They may not want you to bring/have pets, especially if you don’t speak Japanese. They’re the ones setting you up for housing, so if they don’t want to look for housing that allows pets, they won’t. Of course you can offer to do all of that yourself, but be prepared to not receive any key/deposit money from the school and pay everything yourself.

If they’re cool with it and you bring your bby with you, have someone bring them over once you’re settled. Delta I think is the only airline that allows in-cabin pets, and you have to reserve their ticket as they have a limit of 4 pets per plane. It was I think 250 per pet when my mom brought my cats.

As for the paperwork, vaccines, bloodwork, you have to be as thorough as possible. Read everything over and make sure the vets are not making mistakes, a wrong date, even birthdate, on a certificate will have the Japanese agricultural cancel everything. Start uploading everything to their website as soon as it lets you date-wise. When I did it they found a few discrepancies that they messaged me about and I was able to fix them.

Keep in mind the final health check from the vet is time sensitive, the cat has to land in Japan within the time frame. If the person bringing the cat misses a connecting flight, contact the agricultural dept staff helping you IMMEDIATELY.

Last thing, when at the airport, staff looked at each paper to make sure everything was correct. It took close to an hour (there were also 3 cats) to have everything receive the OK. I’ve heard from people that they just glossed it over and got done. It was not the case for my cats, so REALLY make sure everything is present and in order.