It’s been more than a month since I returned from Japan, and I think it’s time I did the partner post to this one from a few weeks back. I was hesitating because six of the 35 postcards I sent us from Japan have unfortunately yet to arrive. Since it’s been a few weeks since we got the last one, I’ve all but given up on them 🙁
Why so many cards? Three reasons: I like writing and sending cards, the variety in Japan is astonishing and I had lots of stamps! The cards I send from Japan tend to fall into two categories: the tourist ones such as the four shown above, and the pop-culture ones such as these:
From the left we have a Godzilla card, a Junji Ito card and an Ultraman card. All these are metallic and foiled, and look wonderful.
I suppose there’s a third category as well: ‘unusual’ which includes shaped and lenticular cards. I’m beginning to think the Japanese post office has it in for such cards, since a lenticular I sent us back in January never arrived and I believe two of the missing ones from this last trip were shaped and lenticular as well.
Postcards are almost always written in the hotel room of an evening while watching trashy TV, although sometimes I’ll write them at a restaurant or to pass the time while traveling (on a train or plane for instance). Notably I almost always write them in laundromats, and have done so in about seven countries now.
Writing so many cards would be a challenge be for many I suspect, but I have a simple system: one describes the day (what I did, what I saw, what I ate, what I bought etc) and the other is unrelated musings or crazy nonsense. The above is an example of the former. (Yes almost all the clothes I took with me were discarded to make suitcase space!)
And that is an example of the latter. Bernard had sent me a set of (honestly terrible) Star Wars rubber stamps and the Chewbacca caught my eye and traveled with me. One thing led to another and soon enough the stamp was writing his own postcards under an assumed name. Did you get a card from APELINQ?
As I said I had loads of Japanese stamps, both because Sue had given me some in Australia (leftovers from her trip) and because I went crazy in several post offices. The above are the staples that have been in print for years now, and you’ll see them on Japanese cards going back a decade or more. There’s also a dog, but I think he must be on one of the missing cards.
Every month Japan prints a special set of themed stamps, and whenever I visit I buy them and use them. I forget the actual themes of the sets I purchased while I was there, but I believe one was ‘summer’ and another ‘flowers’. The rabbit and moon were from the same themed sheet, but I don’t recall what it was.
I hardly sent any flower stamps to myself, and there was an entire sheet of food stamps I don’t have any photos of because the ones I sent myself were probably on the lost cards.
As with most trips I try to vary the stamps on the cards I send, and since each of these themed sheets has ten unique stamps on it you very likely received some not shown here. Why not check yours and see?
The top left one was from a themed sheet showing photographs of tourist locations. I liked these a lot and since this is the only example on the cards I have received I assume I used them on the missing cards. I hope they one day arrive!
I wonder what the other circular bird stamps were and who got them?
I purchased the above stamps (which came from the same commemorative sheet) in Kinugawa, from a post office that was extravagantly staffed and stocked for such an ‘abandoned’ town. As usual communication was via translator, and the young lady that served me went to extraordinary lengths in giving me printed guides on how to mail items in Japan and how to affix stamps. She also gave me dozens of airmail stickers that I promptly lost, although I notice some of the cards we received have them on which means someone in the postal service affixed them!
I hope writing this post triggers some sort of cosmic reward, and the other six cards arrive soon. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into the postcards of my trip, which for me are always the #1 souvenir 🙂