I was sitting this morning on the livingroom couch having a cup of coffee watching Anthony play nicely by himself, when suddenly he started the following conversation:

He seemed satisfied, so went quietly back to his play -- playing by himself, and, as I mentioned before, doing so quite nicely.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I went to the post office to mail some of this year's Christmas Cards. These were all destined outside Japan, so I needed to add the postage myself (the in-Japan New Year's cards are postage prepaid, at the domestic rate).

The postage on an international postcard is 70 yen (about $0.60 US). I wanted to use something more interesting than bland meter-stamped stickers for the postage -- I wanted pretty stamps.

So, I asked if they had any nice Christmas-type stamps. I don't really know what I was thinking even to ask, since Christmas is only superficially noticed over here (somewhat akin to “Secretary's Day” in America). Their response was an appropriate mix of bewilderment and “sorry we can't help”. I recovered quickly and asked if they had any stamps that were particularly “Japanese” -- you know, I'm sending these to people in far-flung corners of the world, so I'd like to send something interesting. They sort of shuffled through some drawers while shaking their head, and I finally asked if gee, anything with any kind of pretty picture at all?

Basically, I got the strong feeling that people only rarely actually ask for stamps of any kind. Normally, they just say “please send this”, and in that process it gets an ugly machine-generated postmark-looking sticker.

Post Offices in Japan

One reason this might be is that the post office only delivers mail -- it does not pick up mail at your house. The only way to mail something is to drop it off at post boxes scattered around town, or at a post office itself. Thus, the need for stamps at home is greatly diminished. Plus, there are post offices all over the place -- I can walk to two from my place within five or six minutes.

Post offices in Japan offer savings accounts, investments, and insurance policies. This ensures that people in every tiny nook and insignificant cranny of the country are offered these services, because there are post offices everywhere, and that includes places where banks and the like would never find it profitable to set up shop. (Incidentally, this is one of the bones of contention with the whole privatization of the post office being planned by the current prime minister. Opponents of post-office privatization worry that people in the boonies may be abandoned by a for-profit private post office.)

Anyway, other than the fact that you have to head out to mail something, the Japanese post office is wonderful. If you come home to find a slip on your door saying that they tried to deliver a package, you can call them up (or go to their web site) and pick a two-hour window to have it delivered. The same day, or the next, or whenever. Until 9pm. 7 days. I've had a package delivered at 8:30pm Sunday evening. No problem.

The stamps I ended up with
(mouseover to highlight stamps)

Back to my story...

I'm sure if I would have gone to a big post office, I could have gotten some wonderfully appropriate stamps, but I was at a tiny one that just happened to be near the gym I go to, so I went with the flow.

About the only thing they could come up with that was remotely nice were some funky “Letter Writing Day 2005” stamps (we'll forgive the missing hyphen between “Letter” and “Writing”, since English is not their first language). They became re-flustered when I asked for 50 stamps, but they dug around and gathered them together.

They were for 80 yen (remember, I needed only 70-yen stamps), but I thought the 14% bump in cost was worth giving something that looks a bit more interesting.

And indeed, some of these are more interesting. There are 10 to a sheet, with some round, oval, square, and rectangular. (Mouseover the photo at the right to see the stamps highlighted.)

Japan doesn't have the peel-off sticker type that the US now has, but the try-not-to-rip-them perforated lick-till-your-mouth-is-dry type that the US had years ago. So, I went through the 30 or so cards I had that day and put a stamp (and the required “air mail” sticker) on each. My friend Shimada-san, with whom I go to the gym, did all the de-perforating, and I did the sticking. They had little wet rollers, so I didn't have to actually do any licking.

About half remain. Then, it's on to the domestic New Year's Cards.....

We're finally making progress on our Christmas Cards and nengajou (Japanese New Year's cards, as mentioned in my previous post). Last week, I had a horrible time trying to get them made. We had a few photos from which a nice card might be constructed, and I spent considerable time with some web sites on which you can construct/order cards.

The format for a Japanese New Year's card is pretty standard, with these items:

• A seasonal greeting (“Happy New Year” or the like, in English or Japanese)
• Perhaps a more personal greeting (“our family expanded this year”)
• The names of everyone in the household (with ages for the kids)
• Your address and, if you like, other contact info (phone, email)
• Some kind of picture or drawing (of the family, the season, or whatever)

Of course, there's great variety in how these are presented — the messages, layouts, and such — and they can be made quite beautifully.

All the above is generally on one side, with the other side reserved for post-office stuff.

You can order cards from shops all over (e.g. convenience stores, photo shops, etc.), and these days, online as well, so the latter is what I tried. You generally choose a template, choose from among pat phrases, enter your address and other info, and voila, you have a personal card ready to be printed en masse and sent to you, so you can then address and send to your friends. They can even come pre-stamped, if you like.

The Web Sites

The web sites I checked were very poorly constructed, with pages that give details about the process, but have no link whatsoever to actually start the process. It was infuriating. Time and again I would just get stuck and have to start over, or, if I got somewhere and made the mistake of going back, I'd not be able to find the page again.

Certainly, some of my problems could have been my lack of Japanese skill, but these sites were universally bad (universally worse than my Japanese skill). On the fourth site, I finally found one that had a clue.

Using Multiple Photos

Unfortunately, we didn't really have any good family photos. We tend to take pictures around Anthony (and have nice shots of Mom+Anthony and Dad+Anthony), so we needed a site that would let us use several photos with which to compose the card. Some sites allowed three photos to be used in a few of their templates, but even then, the three photos combined used only half the postcard (why such a silly restriction?), and so the images would be just too tiny.

Using One Photo

Some of the sites allow you to make postcards with one photo completely covering one side. I finally decided to use my as-of-late not-too-bad Photoshop skills to build a card myself, and use this printing option. So, I took some photos, combined them in a way I thought would look nice, added some of those pat phrases, our address and names, etc. and ended up with a photo that was ready for printing.

So, I go to one of the sites and upload the picture, and the preview shows that the outer quarter inch or so has been cropped off. Sigh, I'd spent so much time getting things just right and here they arbitrarily lopped it off.

So, I went to another site and lo and behold they had explicit instructions, down to the pixel, as to the size of the image to be submitted and area they will print. Finally, a clueful site! This site was Konica Minolta's photo-printing service.

I adjusted the image to the proper size, uploaded, and ordered. I actually prepared two — a “Christmas 2005” version in English, and a “New Year's 2006” version in Japanese. They arrived over the weekend, and I actually got some sent out today. (My experiences at the post office today are worth another post, to appear tomorrow.)

There's a strong tradition in Japan to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances at least once a year by sending a “nengajou” (年賀状), a New Year's postcard. The Japanese Post office holds them as they're mailed, and delivers them en masse on New Year's morning. The average family might get a bundle of 50-150, while someone high in business or politics could well get thousands, I suppose. (Someone like me who is absolutely horrible at keeping in touch gets just a few, although it's gotten better due to Fumie's more socially-adept influence.)

One side of the postcard is generally reserved for the Post Office, while the other usually has some kind of photo or design, along with the names of household members and ages of any kids, and a generic seasonal phrase (“A Happy New Year” is common). Since the average family sends 50-150, it's a lot of work, so personal notes are generally kept very short.

As with families preparing Christmas Cards in America, it can be a big deal to get just the right photo to put on the card. A friend recently took advantage of an occasion on which everyone (including their exquisitely cute two-year-old) got dressed up and visited a shrine, to take some photos that might be appropriate for their New-Year's card. Unfortunately, none of them came out well. There was something wrong with every single shot -- usually someone was blinking, looking the wrong way, had their head cut off, etc.

The photo below is one that they generally liked, except that it doesn't reflect the mom's normally-cheery face. With all my Photoshop fun lately, I thought I might be able to help.

Before      After
mouseover a button to see that version

I spent some time with it, and did the following:

• From other photos dropped in a smiling-mom-face, kid's feet, top of the trees, and top of shrine entrance.
• Got rid of people/giftshop in the background (the people were the hardest part of the whole thing)
• Removed some screening in the eaves of the shrine roof
• Created a bit more foreground area to add some balance
• Centered the family and moved them up a bit
• Created a bit more contrast overall

It all took about five hours (since I'm still pretty new at this), but I'm proud of the results.

We went from fall colors just a few days ago to bleak gray today, and Kyoto's first snow.
(Well, at least the first snow that I've noticed.)

Kyoto's first snow of the season,
as seen from my livingroom window

When I woke up it was a bit above freezing (which is about as cold as it ever gets during the winter) with a steady rain. There were, however, cars on the street with a few inches of snow on them, probably having come from northern Kyoto where it snows much more. Then lo and behold, huge chunks of snowflake the size of Frosted Mini Wheats started crashing down. When they hit my jacket, they sounded like big snowballs.

Here's a snapshot from the webcam at Kinkakuji, the “Golden Pavilion”, from a few minutes ago: