Juanito posted:

Western Union is not sketchy, in my opinion. It's just that you can't get your money back if you send it to a scammer. I absolutely would not use Paypal for this, because they'll lock the account easily for any reason, and then you couldn't even touch your funds for 6-12 months.

I've used Moneygram to send/receive money from South America for years, and never had a problem. The only pain is that if you're sending a really large amount, they're only going to want cash.

Where does he want to send the money in Japan? In Japan, a bank should have all of the details that you'd need for the US side of things, and then find someone at his bank who knows how to actually how to do the transfer.