Category: Postcards

Postcards From Japan

February 23, 2025

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 🙂

Postcrossing Update

December 16, 2024

It’s been over six months since my last Postcrossing update and this strange hobby has been progressing steadily. As of today I’ve sent 1436 postcards and received 1427, and my usage puts me in the top 3% of members based in the USA!

My current maximum is 37 simultaneous addresses and I’m sending/receiving an average of about 40 cards per month. This is time consuming and I’ve considered cutting back, but since I just renewed my PO Box (which is surprisingly expensive) I guess I’ll continue for at least another year.

As usual Germany dominates the top 10 of countries I have sent to…

…and received from. Since May I’ve sent almost 100 more postcards to German addresses alone!

There have been virtually no changes at the low ends of the country lists, with no new countries sending me cards and only a single new one – Uzbekistan – receiving a card from me (which took 82 days to arrive).

Of the 209 countries that currently have postcrossing members, I’ve sent to 63 of them and received from 65. The ‘rarest’ one I’ve got a card from is French Guiana (only 14 members) and the two I’d most like to – but likely never will – get cards from would be Vatican City (4 members) and Papua New Guinea (only 2 members).

Moving onto cards, the variety continues to run the gamut. I added to my bio that I like cheesy old tourist cards and have seen an uptick in them, such as those above. The Australia expo card (why do I not remember an expo in Brisbane in 1988?) was actually sent to me from Germany.

I get lots of animal cards as well, and since I say I like ‘unusual’ animals I occasionally get exactly that, such as the wonderful newt.

I also added that I like ‘fantasy’ cards which led to an uptick in spooky cards, especially witches! I’ve also received a few cool Asian dragon cards from China.

The card on the left, which is shown next to a standard postcard, is by far the largest I have yet received. There’s no explanation on the back of why she’s holding a tank, but since it’s from Belarus perhaps it’s some sort of nationalistic image? At any rate, a lovely card.

I also received a few ‘postcrossing meetup’ cards from Taiwan or China and once again they all were covered with cute stamps that seems to be what the postcrossing users in those countries use. Maybe I should look into getting one like this?

As always I love seeing all the stamps, although the UK and German ones remain marred to the ugly (anti forgery) QR codes.

One Indian postcard was sent using the above for postage, and one Chinese one was sent using just these:

They took up more than half of the back of the postcard, and they actually wrote my address on the other side.

The above are some cool German stamps I received this past six months. I know England had a few nice stamp series as well (including Dungeons & Dragons) alas no one used any on cards sent to me.

A selection of the shaped stamps on recent cards, and as usual Finland wins the contest on most unusual shape.

I particularly like the one in the left where the edge of the stamp is the edge of the ice the man is fishing off. Finland is very clever with their stamp design, and it seems every couple of months they release a new unusual stamp.

The above is the most notable card I received, not just these past six months but perhaps in all the six years I’ve been using Postcrossing! This is an original watercolour painting showing the view from the senders apartment in a Russian town! I praised this in my confirmation of receipt message and she responded saying it took her about half an hour and she tries to do one every week. I had read about users sending original art through the mail but this was the first time I was lucky enough to receive one so I feel very privileged. It’s lovely isn’t it?

In a few days we’re off again to Japan, and as always I look forward to sending the usual barrage of postcards. I hope you enjoy receiving mine when they arrive 🙂

The Japan Postcards

July 19, 2024

It’s been more than a month since I returned from Japan, and I think it’s time I did the partner post to this one from a few weeks back. I was hesitating because six of the 35 postcards I sent us from Japan have unfortunately yet to arrive. Since it’s been a few weeks since we got the last one, I’ve all but given up on them 🙁

Why so many cards? Three reasons: I like writing and sending cards, the variety in Japan is astonishing and I had lots of stamps! The cards I send from Japan tend to fall into two categories: the tourist ones such as the four shown above, and the pop-culture ones such as these:

From the left we have a Godzilla card, a Junji Ito card and an Ultraman card. All these are metallic and foiled, and look wonderful.

I suppose there’s a third category as well: ‘unusual’ which includes shaped and lenticular cards. I’m beginning to think the Japanese post office has it in for such cards, since a lenticular I sent us back in January never arrived and I believe two of the missing ones from this last trip were shaped and lenticular as well.

Postcards are almost always written in the hotel room of an evening while watching trashy TV, although sometimes I’ll write them at a restaurant or to pass the time while traveling (on a train or plane for instance). Notably I almost always write them in laundromats, and have done so in about seven countries now.

Writing so many cards would be a challenge be for many I suspect, but I have a simple system: one describes the day (what I did, what I saw, what I ate, what I bought etc) and the other is unrelated musings or crazy nonsense. The above is an example of the former. (Yes almost all the clothes I took with me were discarded to make suitcase space!)

And that is an example of the latter. Bernard had sent me a set of (honestly terrible) Star Wars rubber stamps and the Chewbacca caught my eye and traveled with me. One thing led to another and soon enough the stamp was writing his own postcards under an assumed name. Did you get a card from APELINQ?

As I said I had loads of Japanese stamps, both because Sue had given me some in Australia (leftovers from her trip) and because I went crazy in several post offices. The above are the staples that have been in print for years now, and you’ll see them on Japanese cards going back a decade or more. There’s also a dog, but I think he must be on one of the missing cards.

Every month Japan prints a special set of themed stamps, and whenever I visit I buy them and use them. I forget the actual themes of the sets I purchased while I was there, but I believe one was ‘summer’ and another ‘flowers’. The rabbit and moon were from the same themed sheet, but I don’t recall what it was.

I hardly sent any flower stamps to myself, and there was an entire sheet of food stamps I don’t have any photos of because the ones I sent myself were probably on the lost cards.

As with most trips I try to vary the stamps on the cards I send, and since each of these themed sheets has ten unique stamps on it you very likely received some not shown here. Why not check yours and see?

The top left one was from a themed sheet showing photographs of tourist locations. I liked these a lot and since this is the only example on the cards I have received I assume I used them on the missing cards. I hope they one day arrive!

I wonder what the other circular bird stamps were and who got them?

I purchased the above stamps (which came from the same commemorative sheet) in Kinugawa, from a post office that was extravagantly staffed and stocked for such an ‘abandoned’ town. As usual communication was via translator, and the young lady that served me went to extraordinary lengths in giving me printed guides on how to mail items in Japan and how to affix stamps. She also gave me dozens of airmail stickers that I promptly lost, although I notice some of the cards we received have them on which means someone in the postal service affixed them!

I hope writing this post triggers some sort of cosmic reward, and the other six cards arrive soon. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into the postcards of my trip, which for me are always the #1 souvenir 🙂

Robot Claw