Category: Postcards

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 🙂

The Australia Postcards

June 28, 2024

I sent myself forty postcards from Australia, which isn’t bad considering I was only there eighteen days! I wrote and sent them every day, and even wrote one on the plane on the way and one the morning I left for Japan.

Displaying them all here is excessive, so I’m showing four special ones above. The top left beautiful Newcastle postcard I sent Kristin (in a package) way back in 1992. I rediscovered it – with a few others – in a box about a year ago and decided to take them all to Oz and finally mail them. The Thylacine card (top right) is surely one of the very few ever printed of this now-extinct Australian mammal? Amazingly I bought it from the postcard shop about an hours drive from our house. The description on the back of the card makes no mention of Thylacines being extinct! The Kosciusko card was purchased from the same shop, and coincidentally is from the very same series as other cards depicting Kosciusko that we bought as a family when we visited in the 1980s!

And the koala one? It’s a Japanese ‘Toppan’ lenticular card depicting toy koalas that was likely printed in the 1960s. It’s worth a bit on the secondary market these days (I bought it on eBay) and when I put it in the mailbox I thought there was a better-than-even chance I’d never see it again! (As an aside Toppan still exists and is one of Japans leading printers of trading cards!)

You’re wondering what I write on the cards, and how I can write two or more a day? The above message is typical: the cards are little diaries of my trips. For many years now on postcards I sent myself I have daily records of almost everything notable that I saw or did on my travels. Sometimes the cards describe an entire day in broad strokes, but more usually they chronicle moments that occurred during that day.

I had some markers with me, and also did a lot of art on the cards I sent. Did you get one with anything drawn on it?

Forty cards cost A$132 to mail to the USA, which is about US$90. I always try to put different stamps on every card, and there were many visits to post offices this past trip. As a result I ended up with a lot of different stamps! Here they all are:

The above show many of the low-denomination stamps available in Australia. I bought this at the main CBD post office in Sydney and the lady at the philatelic counter told me they’ve stopped printing all of these, and once the supply is gone, that’s it!

It cost $3 to send a postcard from Australia to the USA, or $3.30 if you’re using domestic stamps (see next pic). The basic stamp denomination is $1.20, which means it’s not possible to make $3 or $3.30 using such stamps alone. As a result I usually put slightly more than required postage on each card.

The photographic scenery stamps are pretty aren’t they? Note they are marked ‘International’ which differentiates them from domestic stamps. The reason is tax-related and (in my opinion) a bit silly, and I suspect the day Australia gets rid of dedicated international stamps is soon.

I don’t buy every set of stamps available, and usually ignore ugly ones or those intended for birthday greetings or weddings. These canned fruit ones were probably my least favourites of the ones I sent this past trip!

Australia prints stamps labeled as from some of their territories, such as the two Norfolk Island stamps above. This is mostly for philatelic purposes, and all these stamps are legal for use in Australia.

I’ve always loved Australian animal stamps, and there always seems to be some in print, such as the seven birds above.

The annual lunar new year stamps are all issued with Christmas Island labels. Traditionally Australia labels their Christmas stamps as from Christmas Island as well, although you’ll note that wasn’t the case on either of them shown above.

Australia prints a lot of commemorative stamps, most of which depict licensed characters. These come in special sleeves and are intended for collectors, but the stamps are all legal for use and every year I usually buy a set and use them! There were more than the eight Star Wars villian stamps shown above: did I send you one of the others?

It’s visible on a few stamps shown here, but did you notice the ‘Secure your dog for safe delivery‘ postmark? I wonder how many people read or even notice postmarks on their mail? If you don’t, why not have a look next time you receive something! (Also note the $4.50 fish stamp I put in one card!)

The above all went on one card – I overpaid by more than 50% – since I didn’t want to break up the lovely art.

The seahorse stamp is $1.50 and was the first stamp printed after prices recently rose (Australia doesn’t have forever stamps). Strangely they only printed one design to get a new priced stamp out quickly, but the lady in Sydney told me there would be more in the set (marine animals) printed later.

I put this entire ‘minisheet’ on a card, and since it’s massive very little space remained for the address and almost none for a message. Happily the card arrived safe and sound 🙂

Incidentally I put quite a bit of thought into the stamps of every card I send, and when possible try to put thematic ones on the cards. When you get a card from me, pay attention to the stamps which were likely chosen just for you!

Of course Australia was only half my trip! I haven’t yet received all the postcards I sent us from Japan, but once I do you can expect a similar post.

Confucius Say

May 4, 2024

A few years ago I bought a Japanese manga monthly and it came with a sheet of stickers of all 22 members of an idol group. They were postage stamp size, and prime for adding to postcards. But they were also nearly identical, and it seemed a shame to separate them. A plan was hatched.

Rain Of Frogs had been a great success the previous year, but it had been a passive exercise on my brother’s behalf, and I think I needed to step things up a little. I’d had a few ideas in my mind, and the stickers made them all coalesce: I’d send him a puzzle across a series of postcards. Twenty-two, to be precise. And here is what he received:

There’s a message encoded in the cards, and my hope was he could decipher it. Two cards were sent at a time over about a month. There’s a staggering amount of potential combinations in which the cards have been arranged, so I encoded them with hints and icons. The hints themselves were of course received with each card, and the idea was as he got them he could use the hints to work out the correct order and therefore the message.

Some hint examples were:
– “Squirrels are next to cats.” (referring to the cat/squirrel stamps on some cards)
– “I’m in the first five positions.”
– “The colours of the letters are significant.”
– “There is a typo: one O should be a U.” (this was unintentional).

It’s worth mentioning that the nature of the puzzle meant I had to devise a message of precisely 44 letters, which wasn’t at all easy. I didn’t want it to be grammatically strange, or use unfamiliar words, or be the sort of thing that wouldn’t jump out at him after he managed to decode portions of it. In the end I believe I chose something familiar – indeed expected – to make the task easier.

I started sending the cards in early September, and gave him until Thanksgiving to solve it for a prize (which was going to be a second wave of frog/toad cards). He didn’t solve it in time, so I extended the date and provided more hints. Eventually they became explicit to the point of almost giving things away: such as telling him that the colours of letters on adjacent cards matched (which massively reduces the potential combinations) or identifying certain two-card combinations. I issued an ultimate deadline of mid-January (2023). Alas, he failed to solve it.

Could you have solved it? Here’s the answer:

Confucios say Gary Oldman is younger than Gary Numan.

I thought it was easy 🙂

Robot Claw