Thanks for sharing your experience with us.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
As for me, I ended up just transferring the money from the US straight into my Mitsubishi bank account. I know that maybe Sony/Transferwise would have made it cheaper, but for now, I didn't want to deal with creating new accounts, etc.
For those interested...
I first opened a dollar account at Mitsubishi, then transferred money (about $ 100,000) from the US into this dollar account (which was available in 1-2 days).The banking charge on the US side was $45 total ($20 for the wire fee and then on top of that, $25 for the international wire fee).
Mitsubishi's TTB rate (at the time... this is several months ago -- ) was 109.47. (at the same time, on the Live Forex website, it was 109.76). I just went ahead and transferred the money from the Mitsubishi dollar account to the yen account. Basically (I believe) it was like I was paying Mitsubishi 24,025yen...
For the amount I transferred, how quick it and convenient it was (and the stress saved), 24,025yen seems to me like a price worth paying. Now, if I were doing transfers frequently, I would look elsewhere, but for now (since I did this type of transfer (US bank --> straight to my Japanese bank) just twice), I feel good about it.