I sent myself a whopping 63 postcards from Japan! That’s an average of nearly 4 each day. If I was an independent observer, I’d suggest this was excessive, but as with the Australian cards it didn’t seem so while I was there. A ritual of my solo Japan trips has become relaxing postcard-writing in my hotel room while watching anime on the TV 🙂

Why so many? Well an explanation is hardly needed, but let’s just say I’ve leveled up in my postcarding! It’s also true that I bought many more than usual, and even brought with me a couple of dozen leftovers from last winter’s trip.

I was in Japan for 16 days, and for the first time completed a special ‘postcard project’. Once a day I sent myself a card from an art series involving two cats exploring Japan. I had 12 of these from past trips in my collection (here at home) and was confident I could find 4 more while I was there. As you can see above, I did!

I also successfully sent the above enormous lenticular card, which I photographed next to a normal sized postcard. I’d purchased this in Australia several years ago, but never sent it because I was confused about the Japanese rules for sending oversized cards. But I know how to send these now, and I was happy this arrived in perfect condition.

I didn’t count how many unique stamps I used on the cards I sent home, but it’s surely in the dozens. I bought mint retro stamps several times during the trip, and used many of them. You probably got some yourself. I wonder if you look at the stamps?

Last January I went to a postal museum in Arima, and saw some Japanese stamps featuring various pop culture properties. Six months later I used some of these myself on cards 🙂

The above is on a card sent home from Osaka, and which features the rubber stamp I made myself at a Sanrio store. What’s this card talking about? These:

I went all in on these gacha machine ID photos, which followed in the footsteps of ‘someone else’s dog’ from last winter. I think got about 10 times of these, and I stuck every one on a postcard. As it turns out these are members of Japanese (not that famous) idol bands that I believe are all signed to the same management company.

But that still doesn’t explain the dog!