Fading Memories

  • February 26, 2026

Our memories are fluid, and our brains change them as we age. Days and months and years get grouped together, and specific are lost as events become generalizations. We also tend to remember happy events with more clarity than sad ones. As a result nostalgia – the reminiscence of past events – becomes increasingly positive, and we typically remember our youth as better days.

Our brain sometimes fabricates memories as well, and since they are ‘stored’ in the same parts of the brain as real memories we have no way of determining which are real and which are fake except by comparing with others. This process can happen surprisingly quickly, and some specific details in the memories of what you did yesterday may even be incorrect!

I have a childhood memory of visiting a mall far from home. It was with Bernard and dad, but I can’t recall if mum was with us. We did take one or two vacations during school holidays with dad only, so perhaps this was during one of them. I recall the mall as being much bigger than the ones I was used to in Newcastle, which at the time was probably just Kotara Fair since I don’t think Charlestown Square had been built.

While walking around the mall we spied – from an upper level – a cluster of arcade games in the gallery below. We went down and played some, including one I had never seen before (or since), which involved shooting spiders on webs. Doing some research now the game was probably Spiders or Frog & Spider, both of which were released in 1981.

Perhaps one reason I remember (parts of) this visit so vividly is because we were each allowed to purchase an action figure from a toy store, and both of us chose a Star Wars figure. I picked ‘R2D2 with Sensorscope’ and (I believe) Bernard picked an Ugnaught. Both figures were initially released in 1981, but remained available for several years afterwards. We opened them both in the car afterwards, and I’m sure we were both very excited.

And that’s it! Only fragments of this memory exist, and to me it’s notable they are related to video games and action figures. If this was 1981 then I hadn’t started buying books yet (this began with Warlock of Firetop Mountain in 1982), and my world would have revolved around games and toys which is why they’re so strong in my memories.

But as for where we were, and exactly when this occurred, I don’t know. Are these real memories or fabricated? I don’t know either. But since I can close my eyes and picture the view from the gallery to the games below, if this didn’t ever actually occur then my brain has done a wonderful job making it up 🙂

‘Poop Pals’

  • February 22, 2026

I purchased the above in Japan. The name seems to translate to ‘Poop Pals’ and each of the two animals is talking about playing with poop (I think). Obviously their heads resembles the poop emoji.

What the heck is this?

It’s a model kit! The above photo shows the entire contents, and you’ll notice instructions and runners common to other plastic model kits. There’s also two bags of what the kit calls ‘clay’:

This is weird stuff. It’s very lightweight, and feels more like foam than any clay I’ve ever known. It’s also a little oily. For the Australians reading, it has the texture of those old banana lollies, albeit fluffier.

Assembly of the animal bodies is trivial, so I’ll focus on the heads. The poop clay is softened by kneading it, and then stuffed into a mold. A lid is then put on and rotated to flatten the base, and then the final poop-shaped head is complete. It’s easy and works surprisingly well. I imagine kids would love this step.

Then you put stickers on the facial features and your animal is complete. Don’t you agree my cat look wonderful…? Here’s the bear:

The clay/foam apparently dries solid after exposed to the air, so I imagine these things would last a while. But as a model kit it’s quite poor, with ill-fitting pieces (which is very unusual for Bandai) and clay that isn’t adhesive enough for the ears and eyes to stay on.

You get enough clay to make three heads though, which of course I had to try:

I think the above is a ‘twisted bear-cat’. It’s my masterpiece!

This was fun, and were I a drooling child I imagine it would have been lots of fun. But it’s also weird and imperfect, and therefore not surprising that it cost me only ¥99 (about $0.65). We saw it for as much as ¥2000 during our recent trip, and at that price it’s not even close to worth it.

So it was fun while it lasted, which was less than the time it took me to write this post 🙂

The Japan Postcards

  • February 7, 2026

I sent home 55 postcards this past trip, and they’ve all arrived safe and sound. I sent an average of 3 per day we were in Japan, plus an extra on New Year’s Day.

Most of them are full of vivid and often humorous anecdotes about the trip, and I know I’ll be enjoying rereading them for years. I never seem to run out of things to write, perhaps not surprising since I estimate that including all travel and Postcrossing I wrote over 800 postcards last year!

It’s become a little difficult to find tourist cards in Japan now – I saw none in Osaka – but the Japanese still seem to enjoy postcards in general so it’s easy to find artistic ones. Based on the stamps used I think I sent about 115 in total.

I write them every evening, although there were times I was too tired and wrote them the next morning. When I travel alone I often write them in restaurants but I only did that once this trip. Here’s the exact card:

I was going to write a ‘sequel’ to the above since as I was leaving an unexpected song started playing but by the end of the day I had forgotten and that card was never written. I often use my phone to record ‘postcard ideas’ but apparently I’d not done it that day.

The above was sent from Arima, and was the day I went to the postage museum. Both eki stamps were collected inside the museum, and of course I had blank cards in my backpack for that purpose! We saw a lot of good eki stamps this past trip, and they all were collected on at least one card. Many of you would have got one in the mail.

Do you remember ‘someone else’s dog‘? The above card chronicled my discovery of a similar gacha machine on the penultimate day! Tiny things like this are a common topic on cards I write.

Many years ago Bernard send me a set of Star Wars rubber stamps and – for reasons long forgotten – I took to the Chewbacca, named him ‘APELINQ’ and have been using him to deliver sage comments on postcards ever since. Maybe you’ve even received one? The above card was written the day we found a sold out drink machine selling cans with stickers of a Japanese idol group. I made it my mission to find them for sale somewhere before we left…

Some two weeks later, I succeeded. Alas it wasn’t ‘the white one’. And if you’re observing that the above card is massive, then that’s because it is:

The above shows the two largest and the smallest cards all compared to a normal-sized one (bottom right). The biggest one is about five times larger than a normal card, and since it’s also lenticular it’s stiff and somewhat heavy. I put ¥918 postage on it and crossed my fingers and as is obvious it arrived in immaculate condition.

As it turns out I have an even larger card – twice the size of that one – that I plan send on a future trip. I’ll probably put even more postage on that one!

As I mentioned during the trip I went into a post office early on and bought a kings ransom of stamps, including one of each of the basic types, which include the ¥10, ¥30, ¥50, ¥300 and ¥500 above. In the end it wasn’t enough and I needed to buy more, but even sending over a hundred cards it still cost only a fraction of what it would from here or Australia.

It costs ¥100 to send a card airmail from Japan, but when cards are oversized or unusually shaped you need to pay extra. In the past I’ve had such cards take much longer to arrive or not arrive at all, so to be safe now I load on extra postage. Someone got a card with a ¥350 stamp on it this trip. Was it you?

The above are the shaped cards I sent this trip. I was very pleasantly surprised the one at the bottom right wasn’t damaged in any way. In fact very few of the cards show any evidence of being damaged by USA mail sorting machines, which gives me hope they’ve improved their automation.

The stamp at the top is massive. In fact it’s so big I couldn’t really use it on some cards. I had exactly four of these (all different) and two came to us so maybe you got one?

The old stamps on the right were purchased at the postage museum. The had a tiny amount (only four) of unused stamps for sale and I bought them all, wishing they had more. A week or so later I found a stamp & coin shop in Osaka and bought several sheets of stamps from a couple of decades ago. They will be used on my next trip.

In fact I’ve even got most of the cards for that trip, since I found a stash of new tourist ones on the very last day we were there. I’ve got three dozen cards and about ¥4000 in postage all ready to go.

I suppose I should return so I can start sending them 😉

  • Posted in Blog
  • Robert