AQS Advance Notification: Japan’s 40-Day Rule

Most people moving from Malaysia to Japan meet the 40-day rule late. The hard part is done: microchip in, two rabies shots, blood drawn, six months counted out on a calendar. Then a posting date lands and the flight gets booked five weeks away.

That booking is the mistake. Japan’s Animal Quarantine Service, known as AQS, asks to be told about an incoming dog or cat not less than 40 days before arrival. Five weeks is 35 days. The flight is already inside the window.

This guide covers the AQS advance notification as we file it on the Malaysia to Japan pet transport route at My Pet Mover. What it commits you to, which office receives it, and what happens when dates move. The video below covers the wider import sequence.

Filing the AQS advance notification 40 days before arrival is a floor, not a guideline. Applicants must notify AQS at the expected port of entry not less than 40 days before arrival in Japan, and a notification filed inside that window is, in principle, not accepted.

So day 40 is not a target. It is the last day the file can exist, and it sits on top of the 180-day wait Japan already imposes.

What goes on the form is straightforward:

• The animal. Species, breed, sex, date of birth or age, and the 15-digit ISO microchip number.
• The arrival. Expected arrival date, the airport or seaport, and the scheduled flight number.
• The people. Importer contact details, and the consignee in Japan if that is a different party.
• The route in. Whether the animal travels as manifest cargo, checked baggage or in the cabin.

One useful detail sits in the flight field. AQS accepts a notification even when the flight number is not fixed: enter an estimated number or write “to be determined”, then update it once the booking is confirmed. That matters on Malaysian departures, where the flight settles last and the list of carriers that will take a pet from Malaysia is short.

Japan splits the world into designated regions and everywhere else. The designated list is short: Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii and Guam. Malaysia is not on it, so a Malaysian departure follows the non-designated route. That means microchip first, two rabies vaccinations, an antibody test of 0.5 IU/ml or more, then 180 days or more from the day the blood was drawn.

Owners often assume the sequence is linear, so they finish the 180 days and only then start on the AQS advance notification. That adds 40 days to a wait already six months long, and nothing in the rules requires it.

Once the blood-sampling date is known, the earliest lawful arrival date is known too, because the titer test starts the 180-day clock. Pick an arrival date on or after that day, then file at least 40 days out from it.

Day 140 is the row that surprises people. To fly on the first legal day, the notification has to be in almost six weeks earlier, while the wait still has a month to run. Owners who file only after the wait ends fly on day 220, not day 180.

There is no single national mailbox. AQS publishes a contact list by airport and seaport, and the notification goes to the office covering the port the animal actually arrives at. Send it to the wrong branch and it is not quietly forwarded. Malaysian departures route through a handful of Japanese airports that accept dogs from Malaysia, and the terminal or cargo shed decides the inbox.

Two things follow. A dog cannot land just anywhere, because Japan restricts dog imports to a named list of ports. And flying as cargo rather than travelling with you changes the desk, sometimes the reception hours too.

Filing through NACCS, the Japanese customs and quarantine system, avoids most addressing mistakes because it routes by port. Email works too, with attachments under 14MB.

This is the part of the AQS advance notification most guides skip, and the part that costs money. A re-filed notification usually means a re-booked flight, and airfare is the largest single line in the cost of moving a pet from Malaysia to Japan. The form is closer to a booking than a draft, and the terms are published.

The asymmetry is the thing to remember. Later is fine. Earlier is not. A family that files for 20 October, then finds a cheaper flight on 12 October, has saved nothing. The earlier arrival is a new notification with its own 40-day runway.

One NACCS quirk is worth knowing. If the last digit of your notification number is zero, you can correct the filing yourself. If not, the branch does it. That digit decides whether an amendment takes minutes or days.

The AQS advance notification is not the end of the exchange. AQS examines what you filed, along with anything you attached, and issues the approval form back to you. Their guidance is blunt about the failure mode: if there are unclear points or deficiencies, they may not issue the approval at all.

So we attach more than the minimum. AQS invites importers to send supporting documents, naming the rabies antibody test report as an example. That helps twice:

• It lets AQS check the 180-day maths before you fly. A mismatch between the sampling date and the arrival date gets caught weeks out, not at the counter in Narita.
• It surfaces microchip problems early. AQS has flagged that numbers beginning “900 202” are under investigation and are not currently accepted as identification, and that duplicate numbers have turned up on different animals.

That second point matters if your pet was chipped years ago. A disputed chip can mean re-implanting and redoing every step that depends on it, which resets far more than the AQS advance notification. The microchip standards used for pets in Malaysia match the ISO families Japan reads, but the chip still has to scan cleanly.

A notification rarely bounces back with a flat no. It sits, the branch asks a question, and the answer takes a week to assemble. Across the files we have run out of the pet cargo terminal at KLIA, the causes break down like this.

Six in ten hold-ups are calendar problems, not document problems. Nobody lost a certificate. They picked a date the rules would not allow.

The airport row is the avoidable one. A routing that lands the animal at an unlisted airport fails on the notification, not at the gate, so check the transit rules for pet flights first.

The published answer to “I have not filed and my pet flies soon” is not a refusal. It is a sequence, worth reading in the order AQS wrote it.

1. Reconsider the date. Because notification is required 40 days in advance, AQS asks you to look again at the import date first.
2. If the date cannot move, file at once. Submit the notification to the branch covering the intended port immediately, and consult them directly.
3. Send the serological report. For animals from non-designated regions, which includes Malaysia, AQS asks for the rabies serological test report.
4. Accept that space may decide. If the animal needs holding beyond 12 hours and no room is available, you will have to change the place or date of import.

That last point is the one owners never see coming: a clean file can still be moved if the detention facility is full. Filing late carries a second cost too. A pet arriving before its 180-day wait is complete is not turned away, but the remaining days become quarantine in Japan at the owner’s expense.

Owners moving the other way meet a mirror image, because the MAQIS import permit for a pet coming from Japan has its own lead time and validity window. Different agency, same lesson: the permit governs the flight.

Nothing here is difficult on its own. The form is short, NACCS works, and the branches answer email. What catches Malaysian families out is the order of operations: the instinct in a relocation is to book the flight first and sort the paperwork after.

Reverse it for the pet. Fix the blood-sampling date, count 180 days, choose an arrival date on or after that, then file the AQS advance notification 40 days or more ahead. Buy the ticket last, for the date you declared.

After that, the rest of the Malaysia to Japan pet route is ordinary logistics: crate, carrier, export inspection, flight.

1. Is the 40 days counted from the date I send the form?

Backwards from arrival in Japan. AQS asks to be notified not less than 40 days before the animal arrives, so the arrival date is what counts, not the submission date. Count 40 days back from your intended landing day and file on or before it.

2. Can I file without a confirmed flight number?

Yes. AQS accepts an estimated flight number, or “to be determined” in the flight field. Once the booking is confirmed, submit a modification through NACCS or by email to the same branch.

3. What happens if I file the AQS advance notification 40 days late?

In principle it is not accepted. AQS asks late applicants to reconsider the import date, and where it cannot move, to file immediately and consult the branch covering the port. A full detention facility may force a change of date or airport.

4. Does the notification replace the health certificate?

No. They are separate documents at separate stages. The notification goes to AQS in advance and produces an approval form. The health certificate is issued in Malaysia after a clinical inspection within 10 days of boarding, and the original travels with the animal.

5. Can I bring my pet forward to an earlier flight after filing?

Moving the arrival date earlier is refused in principle, along with adding animals, substituting a different animal, and any change after the scheduled arrival date. Pushing the date later is accepted, so declare a date with slack in it.