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 🙂
