Archive for the ‘Memories’ Category

Postcards From Japan

Sunday, February 18th, 2024

So far we have received 37 postcards from our recent Japan trip, all of which I sent myself. Here they all are:

The panda one was purchased at Ueno zoo the day we went and saw the pandas. The Godzilla one is metallic and plastic. I have a few more like this waiting to be sent one day 🙂

The top right one is a lenticular postcard of an underwater scene. It’s the only lenticular we’ve received so far, and arrived about 6 weeks after it was sent. There’s at least one other lenticular card I sent us that hasn’t yet arrived, but it’s been about two months now and I’ve somewhat given up hope.

The left one was purchased in the gift shop of Hiroshima castle (which it depicts). The horse one was purchased less than two hours after we had arrived in Japan, and may be my favourite card of the trip (even though it has nothing to do with Japan). It effectively shows how I usually feel at the end of every day on a vacation!

The postcard showing ‘Alice’ is a mystery: I found it amongst some unsent postcards a few months ago and had no recollection or ever buying (or even seeing) it before. Naturally I took it with me so it could fulfill its destiny to be mailed! The Diavolo postcard depicts an Ultraman villian, and is an impressively metallic and textured card.

The cat one was mailed on Christmas Day!

The card at left was found amongst some old items when I was doing some spring cleaning a year or so ago. It’s about 30 years old and (I think) came in a magazine. I wonder if any Japanese postal employees looked and it and wondered where it came from?

The Buddha card was purchased in Kamakura in 2013 (when we visited with Bernard), and had been ‘gathering power’ – unsent – in my collection for over a decade. Now that power has been released into the world!

The Hermione (from Harry Potter) card is a beautiful high-quality all-plastic postcard and I doubted it would actually arrive. I may have purchased a few others at the same time…

I sent 12 New Years cards in different designs. Did you get the same one I sent myself? The Rilakkuma card was purchased at the Miyajima Island Rilakkuma shop which was insanely well-stocked considering how remotely it was located. I bought two in this series and sent the other to someone I knew would appreciate it 🙂

Nothing says Japan like a photo of a quokka! I bought three copies of that cute card but forget who I sent the others to. The card in top left was part of a set purchased at the cinema when we saw the Kamen Rider film, but the set was for another movie (that we didn’t see).

Four of the cards show here – including the middle one above – I had made myself and taken with me ‘just in case’. I do this every trip, but I’m a fool for every supposing I wouldn’t be swimming with options when it came to buying cards in Japan!

And lastly this gotochi (shaped) card of a Buddha. It’s fairly large, and Japan Post is emphatic that these cannot be sent through the mail internationally. And yet I put a stamp on it and tossed it in the postbox with a wish… and it arrived safe and sound. I also bought an oyster gotochi (in Hiroshima, which is famous for oyster), and sent it to AW’s sister who lives in Japan.

“What do you write on all these cards?” is a question I’ve been asked more than once. As an example, here’s one I wrote the evening of the Earthquake (we were in Osaka):

Most of the cards have silly anecdotes or in-jokes on them that we have invariably forgotten about by the time we receive and read them. They’re mini-diaries, and I’ve got decades worth of them now. They’re my most prized possessions!

In case you were interested, here’s (most of) the different stamps on the above cards:

I’ve become an expert at buying stamps in Japan, and always do my best to make sure I get a good variety for the cards. Take another look at the stamps on your cards!

37 (or more?) postcards in 16 days is a lot, but I never plan on sending myself so many. Truth is I always buy too many stamps, and then end up sending a lot of ‘extra’ cards in the last few days. Of course this post is just the ones I sent myself, and dozens more were sent to other people. I hope you enjoyed the ones you received 🙂

Posted in Blog, Japan, Memories, Postcards, Trip | 1 Comment »

McDonald’s Memories

Sunday, January 28th, 2024

That’s the first Australian McDonald’s, which opened in Sydney the year before I was born. From what I can determine, the first McDonald’s in Newcastle opened when I was 7, and since it wasn’t far from where my Nan lived it was a frequent treat after we’d visit her house.

Since then I’ve eaten at Maccas hundreds of times, and over those 40+ years many memories have been made. Here’s a selection:

  • As a child the McDonald’s calendar was an essential purchase! Not only did we hang it on our walls, we also coloured it in and – most importantly – we used the coupons every month to get free food!
  • Happy Meals were my default order as a child, and the toys (in my memory) were much higher quality than today. I fondly remember some Star Wars stencils that could be used to draw characters, that I wish I’d kept to this day.
  • Ice creams in those days were self-serve!

  • Graduating to Big Macs was one moment in my life when I felt like an adult. I don’t remember who it was, but I was at Maccas with a friend once and he got a Big Mac and I ordered a ‘Junior Burger’ and he asked me why I didn’t eat Big Macs! This prompted me to try one and I never looked back 🙂
  • Back when we had our paper run one time the newspaper came with Maccas coupons for free fries. We ended up with loads of them and I recall I had a lot of fries during the weeks that followed!
  • During the 1984 Olympics I remember my group of friends used to go to Charlestown Maccas after school and watch the athletic events. A girl in my year was working there at the time and she used to surreptitiously give us free food.

  • I used to love the cookies! Australia didn’t have a strong traditional of ‘animal crackers’ so we didn’t know that Maccas cookies were basically the same. Even well into my teens I used to get a box of these with my order and eat them on the bus home.
  • I also used to enjoy their strawberry milkshakes, although I haven’t had one since I left Australia.
  • In my last year of High School we organized a treasure hunt and one item on the list was ‘one point for every McDonald’s cheeseburger you bring us’ and we had loads delivered (as well as a phone call of complaint from a McDonald’s!). This was when microwaves were uncommon so we (me and the judges) ate a bunch for dinner and – to my shame – had to throw the rest away.

  • The frozen cokes I’ve ordered at Australian McDonald’s. During my summer trips it wasn’t unusual for me to have two or three a day, but these past years – since I’ve traveled in winter – it’s usually been just one. It’s the best item on their menu 🙂
  • When I first returned to Oz in 2000 I wrote a series of postcards on alternate days in the George street Maccas. Entitled ‘The McDonalds Series’, these are some of the oldest and most nostalgic postcards in my collection.

  • During our trip to Germany we visited many McDonald’s, often not eating at all. The reason: I was hunting McDonald’s glasses with ‘coca cola’ written in various different languages!
  • At a Maccas in Paris – on the Champs-Elysees to be specific – I ate breakfast very early and was the only diner in the restaurant. A man came and sat down right next to me and bowed his head until it hit the table. I quickly finished and left, and later that day my hotel concierge told me he was probably a homeless man looking to scavenge any food I may have left on the tray.

  • I could do a blog post on Japanese Maccas memories alone, but two that stick out were the Superfries (read about them here) and not once but twice being seated at a very busy Maccas and finding myself sharing a table with a young ‘office lady’ working on her laptop!
  • The memory I’m most proud of would be my 2022 achievement of seven identical orders in seven days at seven different Maccas (read about it here). Will I ever surpass this? No man yet knows…

So many years of McDonald’s! The irony is I almost never eat it in the USA since it’s usually awful here, but you can bet that any foreign trip I ever go on will include at least one stop at a Maccas. Let’s hope there’s many more memories to be made 🙂

Posted in Food, Memories, Miscellaneous, Time | 1 Comment »