Now that the Japanese New-Year cards have been delivered (they're delivered en masse on New Year's morning), I can show the cards we sent this year:

Our Christmas 2005 Card For friends/family outside of Japan

Our New Year 2006 Card For friends/family within Japan

They were actually both exactly the same size, but our address info took differing amounts near the bottom, and they got lopped off for this post.

The New Year card has a dog in the upper corner (2006 is the year of the dog), and the spinning top under “Happy” is a traditional new-year's image (for reasons I must still ask about). The wreath-like thing on the Christmas card is also a traditional new-year's image in Japan, but it also worked well on a western-style Christmas card, so I went ahead and used it.

In a previous post I described a bit about how these got made, and in yet a different post, I gave a short intro to Japanese New Year cards.

Among the cards we received today was this one, from a friend. If you read the short intro to Japanese New Year cards mentioned above, you'll recognize the photo.