Packing for travelling can be a trouble, because each airline has the bag weight limit. It depends on a airplane or the class. Fortunately I've never paid a money for extra weight, because I always pay attention to it.
In Japan, hard suitcase is common for travel abroad. In Japan there are hardly any soft suitcase, I think. More than 10 years ago, when I went to Scotland to study English for 3 months, I bought a big luggage. It was also hard suitcase. A good point was that hard surface protects items inside, but a weak point is that it has a bit weight itself. On the last night in Scotland, I packed everything in the luggage, and tested weight of it, by just holding up by myself. At the check-in counter in the airport, my luggage was 19.7kg (20kg was maximum)! I was surprised that my hunch was quite right.
As we go to Japan, I started to do packing. And this time, I bought a luggage scale at the first time. We are going to stay in Japan about a half of year, and extra charge is quite expensive, so we need to be careful about the weight. Fortunately, I know my country very well, local procurement is no problem and we can easily get everything we need in Japan. I think I will do packing minimum as much as I can. But you know, it's hard work!
