All told I sent us 36 postcards from Japan, and the reason I’ve waited on this post is that six of them have yet to arrive. I haven’t given up hope since after my last trip a handful of cards took three months to find their way here but I don’t want to wait that long so let’s review a selection of the ones that have arrived today.
Fuji postcards are very common, and it’s extremely likely I’ve sent you one or more over the years. The image of the Shinkansen speeding in front of Fuji is iconic, and I’ve bought and sent many cards depicting this over the years. The bottom left card is one of several 1950s-era Japanese postcards I obtained at a postcard show last summer, and you’ll see several more of them in this post.
Geisha are iconically Japanese, but aren’t exactly common. And yet they still print postcards of them, which I usually buy since they’re colourful and pretty! We saw a geisha in the wild many years ago in Kyoto. She boarded a bus in full makeup and dress, and it was obvious she was a curio even for the locals. The leftmost card shows a ropeway in Hokkaido, and I should have saved it for a future trip…
The graphic Nagoya postcards were found at a post office, which was a relief since I’d had difficulty finding other postcards in that city. The one on the bottom right came from the zoo we visited, and the bottom left one was found packed with a VHS tape in my attic during a recent cleanout. It’s over 30 years old, very flimsy, and I’m surprised it survived the mail 🙂
Every day I sent us two cards, and as usual the messages were usually a general description of what we did that day on one, and some specific incident or event on the second (like what we ate or bought). This may seem mundane, but after doing this for almost two decades it’s fun going back and reading these tiny diaries.
The bottom left one came from the Alice in Wonderland shop in Nagoya with the tiny door we had to squat down to enter. It’s a lovely card and I should have bought more of their unique designs. Postcards are still very popular in Japan and it’s not hard to find good ones, which is why I was puzzled at the apparent lack in Nagoya.
These were purchased from a tiny store in Asakusa that sold mostly photos of celebrities from decades ago. This is a weird type of Japanese shop that doesn’t have a real western equivalent (maybe I’ll blog about one some time) but I was happy and surprised to see they had a small but incredible variety of (dated) pop culture cards as well!
I sent us two lenticular cards, and the Christmas one in the middle is one of them. Sent on Christmas Day, this described the fun we had shopping the otaku shopping district (Osu) in Nagoya. On the right is our new years card. I sent 14 new years cards on January 1, in four designs. Most depicted cute snakes, but as you can see ours didn’t 🙂
As I understand, you’re not technically allowed to mail shaped postcards in Japan. And yet they print them, and I’ve sent many over the years and they all arrive. Gotochi cards (special souvenir postcards sold at post offices) are shaped as well, and I’ve now sent myself two over the years and neither have arrived. I wonder what’s special about gotochi cards that prevent them from being mailed internationally? (The above card isn’t a gotochi, but was purchased from a popup shop showcasing work by the artist.)
Here’s the other lenticular I sent us. It’s massive: easily one of it not the largest card I’ve ever mailed. It’s more than twice as large as a normal postcard, and I put a bunch of extra postage on it just in case. I was very surprised it arrived, and it’s given me the idea of mailing an even bigger – as big as an A4 page! – Japanese lenticular card that I bought years ago.
As for the six that haven’t arrived, I don’t remember what they depicted or what I wrote on them. I number my cards so I can extrapolate when and where I sent them (Nagoya and Tokyo) but can’t speculate why they never arrived when others mailed the same day in the same mailbox did.
And as for the stamps, here are all the unique ones on the cards I mailed us:
Some good stamps here, but I discovered something interesting at the very tail end of the trip so I think the stamps I send from Japan next time will be a lot more interesting…
All these cards are now put into the big binder titled ‘Japan’, which is so full I think I need to start another. And if you’re wondering, yes I left space for the missing six 🙂