I picked up this kanji fish stamp in Itoya during our trip and I’m so excited about it. I’ve seen these stamps in previous trips and I’ve always loved the artistry and meanings. I wish I’d written down the artist’s name. He has a whole collection of these stamps, with simple drawings mixed with kanji. 
This one in particular means (roughly translated) “a feeling that you are face to face even though you are far apart”. Isn’t that a perfect description of letter writing? Naoto, who isn’t often impressed with rubber stamps, convinced me that I needed this stamp in my collection. I’m glad I let him talk me into buying it!
Yesterday was a most beautiful day and I spent some time on the balcony writing letters and using my new stamp. I stamped it on some sticker paper and cut out a bunch of stickers to send to pen pals. I’m very happy to share these sentiments with my letter writing friends!
kimberly ah
kimberly at home
Category Archives: snail mail
Spending The Yen 5: Hiragana Stamp Set
Once again reviving the Spending the Yen series…
I bought these hiragana* stamps two years ago in a tiny scrapbooking store near an izakaya where Naoto and I shared dinner with his family. When I bought them, I didn’t realize how frustrating they would be to use. Every time I wanted to write something, I had to ask Naoto to spell it out for me. So I put them away in the spare room and forgot about them until recently. Every once in awhile I’d see them sitting on the shelf, taunting me and the money I’d wasted. But, now that I’ve had some practice during my Japanese class, I’m using them! I’m still pretty slow, but I can usually pick the right sounds for the words and names I’m trying to write. (Though, I still have Naoto check my work to be sure!) 
Here’s a peek at the whole set. (Some of the characters may be upside down because I put them away haphazardly last time.) When I use them, I have my textbook open to the hiragana chart so I can refer to it as I sound out the word. (I don’t have my hiragana sounds memorized yet…) It really does remind me of learning to read as a kid. I’m slowly getting better with practice, so I’m trying to stamp a random Japanese word on outgoing mail for the rest of the month. (I’ll let you know how that goes!) 
I have “arigato” (“thank you”) down thanks to writing a few thank yous lately. 
*If you don’t know what hiragana is, this site does a nice job of explaining it. It’s basically the Japanese phonetic script–each “letter” represents a vowel sound or a combination consonant/vowel sound. There are forty-six sounds. In some ways, they are easier than English because each sound only makes that sound. (Unlike in English where we have the long e, the short e, the silent e…) But, the letters are difficult to decipher sometimes and very challenging to write, I think.
Write On Challenge Recap
I know it sounds cliche, but where did April go? I feel like I blinked and here we are in May and my mail pile is growing!! A lot of people who haven’t written in awhile reappeared in my mailbox in April. (Just to be clear…I am not complaining. I am the most patient of pen friends because there are times I take forever to write, too!) After a bit of a dry March, it’s good to find letters waiting for me again. Now I just need to spend some time this weekend catching up on my pile.
How did your Write On/National Letter Writing Month go? I sent out forty-one pieces of mail: twenty six letters, eleven postcards, three international, and one mini-package. (So far this month, I’ve mailed seven cards, thanks to Mother’s Day!)
In other (awkward) news, I joined Kathy and Donovan (and Katie!) at the Letter Writers Alliance Clubhouse for the Virtual Letter Social last weekend. I had a great time writing part of a letter (pictured at the top) and chatting stationery, pens, postcards, cocktails, 1970s organs… Thanks, Kathy and Donovan, for inviting me!
USPS Consumer Advisory Council Meeting 7
Our April council meeting seemed like the most productive one yet. I admit I’ve been feeling a little bit down about the council the past couple of months, feeling like we were kind of just treading water and making little progress. This month, I felt the warm breeze of change, like we are finally starting to accomplish some of the things we set out to influence.
We started by hammering out the details for the two post office on wheels appearances (discussed at last month’s meeting). The mobile post office wouldn’t work for the Day in Our Village event because the sale of goods is prohibited there, but the postmaster is looking into hosting a table and handing out flyers, lapel pins, and coloring books. The Oak Park Farmers Market liaison is optimistic that the post office on wheels can be nearby the farmers market this summer and suggested July or August (for the ever popular “corn season”) as the best option. This one sounds like fun since there will (hopefully) be a special postmark. The post office will provide a press release to the local newspapers and distribute flyers to the Oak Park area residents to publicize the event.
We also talked about having a “Post Office Customer Appreciation Day”. At the beginning of our meeting the postmaster mentioned that the Oak Park Main Post Office is a registered landmark and it opened in 1935. I love celebrating milestones and anniversaries, so I suggested the PO hosts a customer appreciation day on the day the Oak Park Main opened. I was delighted when my idea was met with enthusiasm both from the council members and the post office team. We thought it would be fun to have tours of the building so that people could see what a gem we have in our community.
Then, to finish off last month’s passport discussion, the Oak Park Main Post Office will be hosting a passport fair on Saturday, May 16th from 9AM-2PM. There will be more clerks on hand to process passports and the fair will be heavily promoted in the local newspaper and postcards in area mailboxes. The postmaster is also looking into re-opening the window(s) by the door during peak hours for package pick-ups (and possibly passports) to alleviate some of the lines. This will be a fine balance of making sure that manpower is not wasted since that person would be slightly removed from the regular window business. It was also decided that Jackie (the regional manager for our area) and a council member will visit the post office on a Saturday to observe the happenings from the lobby to get an idea of issues and solutions.
Oh, and we decided to table all further discussion about snow until at least the end of the summer.
High five council members!
Simple Spring Birthday Invitations
Continuing the cherry blossom mail theme…
Peggy and I are hosting a tiny birthday celebration for Karen and Susan in May. I thought I’d try to set a special tone for the celebration by sending out paper invites. There are only four of us, so it was an easy task. Using my trusty typewriter, some washi tape, those cherry blossom cellophane bags, and some 4-bar cards that magically fit inside, I came up with a simple spring design. 
My only regret is that I placed the mailing labels over the information. I think they would have been more fun and colorful if I’d left the invitation side blank (as shown above) and put the mailing label and the stamp on the reverse side. That way, the cellophane didn’t even need to be opened. 
But I do like seeing the stamp on those washi tape stripes, so all is not lost I suppose.
Sigh…I do love a paper invitation, don’t you?
Cherry Blossom Mail
I’m a bit late for cherry blossom season, but last week, I sent out some pink blossomed mail to a few pen pals. What can I say? I’m inspired by those postage stamps. 
When we were in Japan last year, I picked up a bunch a sakura stationery and of course I tucked it away to use this spring. I wrote letters on the kaishi papers, folded them around a Japanese tea bag and tucked them inside these sakura printed cellophane flat bags. The tiny sakura flowers on the papers showed through the bags…flowers everywhere! I sealed up the bags with washi tape and used labels for the addresses. Easy!
I got a bit behind last week on the Write On Challenge and National Letter Writing Month but I’m all caught up and looking forward to finishing strong. I can’t believe April is almost over! How has the challenge gone for you?
Postcards & Letters – Truth or Fiction
We had our postal advisory council meeting on Wednesday and I finally have a real, true, officially-from-the-USPS answer to Postcard Race:
Letters do not travel faster than postcards.
First class stamps do not help postcards travel faster.
Mystery solved.
I’ll have a full report from the council meeting and more next week. In the meantime, have a good, mail-filled weekend!
P.S. Cats in Clothes postcards are from this set by Eggagogo. They are seriously my favorite things–look at that sweater vest!!
Japan Does It Better 22: Gifts of Friendship Stamps
Have you seen the Gifts of Friendship stamps released in the U.S. and Japan? The stamps celebrate the exchange of flowering tree gifts between the US and Japan. In 1912, the US received a gift of over three thousand flowering cherry trees from Japan. In 1915, the U.S. returned the favor by sending fifty dogwood trees to Japan. These stamps celebrate the 100th anniversary of that gift.
Since I am a huge lover of cherry blossoms, I preordered loads of the U.S. version to use on my spring mail. I also asked my sister-in-law if she would buy a sheet of the Japanese version for my stamp collection. Lucky for me, a care package arrived from Japan this weekend (with lots of treats for Naoto and me!) and two sheets of the Japanese stamps were tucked inside. 
I really love the U.S. version, even though they are reminiscent of the cherry blossom stamps issued a few years ago for the centennial of the 1912 cherry tree gifts. The US sheet contains ten of the US stamps and features two of the Japanese version (but for use in the U.S.). I think the colors on the U.S. version are perfectly springy with the pretty blue skies and pinks and corals and pale purples of the flowering trees. And the Japanese ones are lovely, featuring close-ups of the cherry blossoms and dogwood blooms with Japan’s Diet (Congress) and Constitutional Memorial Clocktower respectively in the backgrounds. 
The Japanese sheet contains the US and Japanese versions as well as six other stamps that highlight the white dogwood, cherry, and red dogwood branches on a simple cream background. I love that Japan added this variety to their edition. 
On the US versions, the writing is very spare, just noting USA, 2015, and the “Forever” denomination on the stamps in plain black text. The Japanese versions are accented with gold text of the 82 yen denomination and “Japan-U.S. Flowering Dogwood Centennial” in both English and Japanese. The U.S. version is much more spare than the Japanese version, which seems to celebrate the exchange with both countries’ flags and the flowering trees decorating the sheet.
I do love both versions and it’s not often that two countries can go head-to-head in a sheet of stamps battle. But I do think, in this case, because of the variety and the gold details that this is another case of Japan Does It Better!
To see the rest of the Japan Does It Better posts, go here.
Postcard Race–The Results
The Postcard Race results are in*!!!
Based on my limited testing (six attempts to get some sort of consensus), there really is no rhyme or reason to explain delivery differences between postcards and letters or first class stamps and postcard stamps. I mailed everything from blue boxes in my neighborhood. 
Pictured above is how I documented the races. I used my Letter Ledger and wrote which mail was sent and when. My recipients tweeted to me (or, in my parents’s case, called me) when they got their mail so I could document the results (in the “items to note” section).
I should have known there wouldn’t be any clear results based on my first race. I sent Melissa in DC two postcards, one with a first-class stamp and one with a postcard stamp. The first class stamped card arrived two days after the postcard stamped card. This hurt the theory that first-class stamps move postcards more quickly.
But then, I sent Danielle in Tacoma, WA two postcards (one stamped with a first-class stamp, one with a postcard stamp) and a letter (stamped with a first class stamp + 21 cent stamp because it was a rigid envelope) on the same day. The letter arrived two days before the postcards did. I thought maybe we were onto something based on the theory that letters travel faster than postcards, but further testing proved it all wrong.
I was less surprised by the results of the races sent within Illinois. Both Katie (in Wheaton) and my parents (in Washburn) received their mailings on the same day, which I kind of figured since they didn’t have far to travel. (Weirdly enough though, it took the mail just as long to travel 130 miles as it did to travel 20 miles.)
In a last-ditch effort to see if I could get any sort of real result, I sent a letter and a postcard to Ryan in Stanford, CA and a letter and a postcard to Carolee in San Francisco. They both received their mailings on the same day, too.
I wonder if the results were skewed by location…is mail delivery affected by sorting facility locations or the amount of mail a post office receives? After our next Post Office Advisory Council meeting, I’m going to ask the experts if there is any truth to the rumors that letters travel faster than postcards, or first class stamps move mail faster than postcard stamps. I will report back again!
Are you doing any fun postal experiments? I’m still plugging away at the Write On challenge this month. I won’t be sharing my mail here, but I’m sharing it almost daily on Instagram!
*If you are new here, follow the link to the original post, otherwise this post might not make any sense!
Write On In April…
Just when I thought I couldn’t handle another month-long letter writing challenge…well, here I go again. I heard about the Write On Campaign on Instagram a few weeks ago and I signed up for a free kit, so now I’m obligated, right?
In all honestly, I’m really looking forward to April, which is actually the “official” National Letter Writing Month. I’m looking forward to getting back into the daily habit of writing and catching up on my growing mail pile. And, I just found my original welcome note from the Letter Writers Alliance. March 29th marked my five year anniversary as a member of LWA. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than writing letters!
kimberly ah 