Category: Postcards

The Japan Postcards

July 15, 2026

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!

The Australia Postcards

July 9, 2026

On this past trip, I sent myself 35 postcards from Australia. Here’s some of them:

As usual I numbered the cards, and the highest is number 36 but one (number 20) never arrived. Does this card exist and is still in transit, or did I make a numbering error? I don’t know, and it’s difficult to tell based on the dates and messages on 19 and 21.

Most of the cards are vintage thanks to Sue giving me a bunch she had found in an antique store. We found almost no new cards on our road trip which was surprising since some of the places we visited (Katoomba and Dubbo Zoo) are tourist attractions. I suppose Australians no longer send each other postcards.

I sent us three a day, although I have no recollection of writing so many! One card describes the events of the day, and the other two are just random/funny events from that day or the trip in general. The above is an example, and if you’re wondering why I had the idea of including SHAZAM in the card your guess is as good as mine!

And none of those ten Chomp bars survived until the Japan flight, but rest assured I purchased more.

I do my best to vary the stamps I put on all the postcards I send, but I was very surprised to discover seventy different stamps on the 35 cards!

This was possible because I discovered (here at home) a stash of old Australian stamps that I brought with me. In addition the guy at the post office near the QVB in Sydney did his best to help me buy every different stamp they had in stock.

It is my experience that postal workers – in the US, Australia and Japan – are usually more than happy to entertain my requests to look at and buy as many different stamps as possible 🙂

There’s also the licensed stamp sets, of which I saw about a dozen in post offices while I was there. I used the stamps from the Avatar and Big Things sets, and if you look at your postcards you may see examples from both.

These cards will all be filed in my second ‘Australia’ binder with the hundreds of others I’ve sent myself from those shores over the years. As I’ve mentioned many times, these are my most treasured ‘souvenirs’ from my travels.

I’ll (probably) do a post about the Japan postcards as well, although we’re still waiting for a half dozen or so to arrive…

Postcrossing Update

May 13, 2026

Another six months have passed, and it’s time for another Postcrossing update. I do these periodically to review all the cards I’ve received, before they are put into attic storage.

Those are my numbers since the last update, an increase of about 275 each. I’m averaging just shy of 50 cards a month, as I have been for about a year now.

For the first time in over a year, I received a card from a ‘new’ country: Iceland. The card is shown above, took 43 days to arrive, and the seller wrote that their school was closed the day they wrote due to a snowstorm! Even though it was my first Icelandic card in 8 years of Postcrossing, it was still the 40314th card sent by an Icelandic user, which gives you an idea of the number of people that uses this hobby.

A good amount of cards I receive continue to be ‘multiview’ tourist cards, which I mention (on my bio) I like. These are not as available as they used to be, so they’re often older cards, and I always want to step into them to visit the locations when the photos were taken!

Animal cards weren’t as common this half-year, and in fact an increasing amount of cards are just art (sometimes AI) or generic designs. I expect this is due to tourist postcards becoming increasingly unavailable in many cities around the world.

I received six dragon-themed cards! In my bio I also say I like fantasy art and I get it a fair amount of it. All three of the above came from Chinese senders.

Of course I need to send cards to receive cards, and getting 50 a month means I write that many as well. What do I write? Usually something trite about me, my job, what I’m doing that day and mundanities like that. It’s not easy writing the same thing on ten or more cards at a time, so I sometimes mix it up with a movie review or comments on the card image.

The Australian maxicards continue to arrive. As I’ve said in the past, these will get a dedicated post one day…

On the topic of stamps, next week the USA releases its first Postcrossing stamp! This is remarkable enough, but the fact it’s a triangular stamp makes it even more notable. The official release will be at a massive stamp show in Boston that runs for the entire week. I’d love to go, but alas I must visit Australia 😉

In the last update I mentioned I had considered slowing down with this hobby, although as evidenced that hasn’t happened! Not only did a renew the postbox for another year (which costs over $200 now!) but I didn’t reduce the amount of cards I sent in any way. I guess I’m in it for at least another several hundred cards!

Robot Claw