Category: Postcards

The Japan Postcards

July 2, 2025

In my two weeks in Japan I sent a vast amount of postcards! It’s so easy to find good ones there that I just kept buying, and the same is true for stamps. I hope you liked the ones I sent you.

I sent a ridiculous 52 cards home, or about 3.5 every day. About a third were typical tourist cards, and some are shown above. I find writing cards in hotel rooms very relaxing, and every evening I’d do that with anime on the TV and snacks close at hand.

The Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford cards were purchased in Japan a few years ago, and the other two were found in antique shops here and Australia. I actually found a sizeable stash of geisha cards; maybe I sent you one of them?

The Kamen Rider card game from the Ishinomori museum I visited on a day trip, and I regret not buying more from their selection. Almost every museum or attraction in Japan sells postcards, and they’re often good ones. I assume the Japanese must still enjoy sending them.

Illustration cards are very popular in Japan as well, and I’m always spoiled for choice. The ones above were purchased in various locations but the top right one, which depicts a ningen yokai, is something special. The black, blue and gold are not printed ink, they are pieces of paper glued to the background! It’s hand made and was quite expensive (¥780) but it was one of about a half dozen designs and so well done I wish I’d bought more.

The card on the left is some sort of melon girl mascot (for Matsushima?) and I bought a blind pack of three cards (there were 20 different varieties), and the one on the right was in a pack of cards I purchased in Sendai. As for the middle one, it’s over 30 years old and came with a VHS tape we bought decades ago 🙂

On previous trips some of the unusually shaped cards took ages (sometimes months) to arrive and I always wondered why. I’m happy to say I now know it was always simply me not putting enough postage on.

So now I know how to mail large or unusual cards from Japan, and I took the chance to send this gigantic lenticular example, which is twice the size of a normal card! It arrived in only a week or so, which means that next time I may be able to send and even bigger lenticular card I purchased a few years ago.

As for the backs of the cards, I took the chance to imprint eki stamps on them whenever I could. I didn’t find as many as my last trip, but most of those I did was of extremely high quality. The Hakodate Ropeway stamp in particular is amazingly detailed, and I wish I’d had more than onky two cards with me when I found it (up on the mountain). Why can’t all eki stamps be that good?!

It’s fun buying stamps in Japan. It’s almost always the same routine: the postal workers are hesitant and nervous until I show the translator screen and then they seem surprised and delighted that a tourist is actually buying postage stamps!

Often two or three clerks help me at the same time, and I assume this is because I’m a foreigner and some of them want to practice their English. With the exception of the larger post offices in Tokyo, very rarely do they actually speak English but sometimes they seem to have a basic understanding.

You may recall the old Japanese stamps I received from a Postcrosser? I used them all during this trip and I was pleased to see they all ‘worked’!

Much like Australia, Japan issues collectible stamp sets and while the majority are anime-based, how could I resist these cute animals? Maybe next time I’ll get the Frieren or Dungeon Meshi ones…

While I’m traveling solo in Japan I rarely speak, and perhaps this is why I don’t run out of things to write on postcards. The ones from this trip are now in my Japan binder, which is so full it’s time for me to begin a second one. I’m already looking forward to the cards I’ll send myself from the next trip 🙂

The Australia Postcards

June 30, 2025

During my recent trip, I sent 27 postcards home from Australia, which was two each day plus an extra one to document the (temporary) loss of my hat. In previous years I’ve documented here all the cards and stamps, but that’s a lot of work so I’ll be showing highlights only in this post.

The most common card theme was animals, with a full third of the cards I mailed being kangaroos or koalas, and a few extras of other Antipodean beasts. You’ll see from the excerpts above I went ‘all in’ on a new series of AI art cards I found in Sydney, since I believe in the future they’ll be an amusing snapshot in time 🙂

The middle card above is a Delta airlines card, perhaps given out on flights decades ago? I wrote this in multiple parts while in-transit to Oz, and posted it as soon as I arrived. The other two cards were brought with me to Australia; I always bring a stash with me when I travel due to the potential difficulty of finding cards in shops these days.

Sue gave me several retro cards she found in an antique store and the two rural cards above were part of that stash. They’re wonderful, and it’s my dream one day to find an antique shop in Australia with a massive display of old (70s/80s) cards to buy!

The Men At Work card 40 years old and when I found it in the postcard shop not far from our house I knew I’d be sending it to myself from Australia one day. The Mickey Rourke card was purchased in Japan years ago, and Warren Beattie was found in a PA antique store a couple of years ago. I like finding (and buying) unusual postcards since I always know I’ll have the chance to send them home or to someone else one day.

As usual I did my best to make the stamps on each card unique, and this was helped immensely by Sue also giving me a bunch of retro Australia stamps she had purchased from ‘an old man’ sometime last year. The spaceship one above is one example, and here’s some more:

The middle strip above is nostalgic since I recall having them in my childhood stamp collection and loving that they formed a continuous image. Now I own them again!

Australia issues lots of stamps, and I didn’t come close to running out of variety. Even beyond the ‘normal’ stamps there were a dozen or more packs of collectors stamps available in post offices, of which I only purchased the Gremlins set. Did you get a card with a gremlin on it?

The above is an a true story of the time Sue and I saw a wild emu during our road trip, written one evening in a hotel room in Wellington. As usual I wrote a mix of what I did, ate or saw on the card backs and collectively they make for a fun diary of my trip.

It’s a lot of work writing and sending these cards, but apparently more than two per day in Australia wasn’t enough work since I sent even more from Japan. You’ll see what I mean in the next post…

Postcrossing Update

April 26, 2025

Through Postcrossing, I’ve now sent 1624 postcards and received 1604. These are increases of about 200 cards since my last update five months ago, which means my average of 40 cards a month remains unchanged.

As far as countries, there have been no changes since the last update, with the top ranks (sent and received from) the same and no new countries added. About a third of my cards are sent to and received from Germany.

It’s always fun to remove the cards from my P.O. Box, since I never know what to expect. Unlike some users, I don’t have a large list of preferred types – and no restricted cards – so what I receive tends to run the gamut.

I do mention that I like vintage tourist cards, so I get a decent amount of them. A lot of Postcrossers don’t like such cards, so I hope users are happy to find someone that does!

If you’re wondering, other card types that people usually say they don’t like are ad cards, homemade cards, animal cards and religious cards.

I seem to have gotten a lot of celebrity cards these past five months, and I’m actually considering adding a line to my bio asking for postcards of very obscure or forgotten celebrities just to see who I get!

I have added ‘fantasy’ to my short preferred list, but so far very few in that category have arrived. I tell people if they have any particularly strange or unusual card to send it my way, but so far I’ve not seen anything that has greatly surprised me 🙂

Three of the cards I received since the last update are ‘maxicards’. These are postcards featuring a stamp affixed to the art side that is identical or thematically similar to the card art. These are usually sold by postal services, although independently produced versions exist. I’ve got a lot of these from Postcrossers over the years, and maybe I’ll do a post on them one day.

Maxicards have been produced by Australia post for decades, and Adam seems to have gotten his hands on a bunch of older ones which he has been sending me periodically. I wonder where he got them from?

I continue to get a lot of unusually shaped stamps, and the one from Finland at top right is particular interesting. The ‘missing’ part of the stamp is also a stamp, and I’d actually received it from a different sender some time ago. The USA should do a stamp set where each state is its own stamp!

Most postal services are struggling with a drop in people sending mail, and one popular method to raise revenue continues to be issuing licensed stamps. Very often these are sold as collectibles and therefore people rarely use them for postage, but when I travel I always try to buy and use such stamps.

The UK issues a lot of these sorts of stamps, and I seem to be getting more and more on recent cards (possibly since the QR codes on the ‘normal’ stamps are ugly). The podracing stamp above is quite large and one of my favourite stamps I’ve received so far!

I received two very special things these past five months. The first was the above acrylic painting of a cute duck! This is my second piece of original painted art received through Postcrossing, and as you can see it’s incredibly good. I messaged the artist and she said she painted it and liked it so much she and hung on her wall for a year before she mailed it. She was nervous the recipient wouldn’t appreciate it but I assured her we did. Now we’ll frame this and hang it on our wall.

The second amazing delivery came from a Japanese user. When I read her bio she mentioned she really loved stamps, so I used a large card and filled it with about 20 different stamps. This made her super happy, and she messaged me saying she wanted to send me something in return. I agreed, and a month or so later found an envelope in my PO Box that contained a packet of older Japanese stamps! She mentioned I can use this on my next trip to Japan, which I absolutely will.

But that wasn’t all she sent: the envelope also contained eight Ultraseven postcards! These are beautiful, featuring classic art from one of the most important Ultra series of all time. I’ll be sending these all to myself from Japan over the years. I was so happy with what she sent me I will be sending her another card loaded with stamps, this time from Australia 🙂

Right now I can send 41 cards at a time, and usually ‘do postcards’ weekly so I’ve always got the maximum amount in transit to users around the world. I send/receive about 10 a week, which is a lot but not too many, and I’m happy to continue at this rate for the time being.

Robot Claw