Postcrossing Blog

I’ve been excited to write this book review for a while! Lydia Pyne’s book on postcards is lovely: full-colour reproductions of a number of different interesting postcards illustrate the text, and her enthusiasm for postcards shines through on every page. She suggests that postcards were the world’s earliest social network, a way that people communicated casually across sometimes great distances, and shared something of themselves in the process. She points out that many traditional postcard designs and messages look exactly like scrolling through someone’s Instagram account, for example, which makes total sense to me.

There were a lot of fascinating anecdotes in this book. I found myself slipping in a little sticky page marker for something I wanted to come back to again and again. Admittedly, sometimes I wanted to argue with it a bit, and I was a bit confused by the fact that it didn’t even mention Postcrossing (which would, if anything, support the social network idea)—particularly when she said that nobody really sends postcards anymore.

But mostly I just found it fascinating. I think the most interesting part was the section on political postcards, and the suggestion that postcards were used explicitly to support the revolution in Russia (from early anti-imperialist postcards in the 1870s to Soviet propaganda in the 1930s). Because they were difficult to control, despite the best efforts of the state, they reached all kinds of people. The suffrage movement also involved postcards, and it’s fascinating to wonder about how they might have changed people’s minds, chipping away at their preconceptions a little bit at a time. One postcard on its own may not seem much, but it does form a connection—and it makes me think about the way that Postcrossing in particular can form connections between random people who would never meet otherwise.

I’d say that this book does exactly what I ask of a good non-fiction book: it gives me more questions than answers, about other things I’d like to learn or delve deeper into. Each chapter outlines a facet of the topic, but there’s always more to learn. I need to look out for more books to fill the gaps!

As always, I welcome new suggestions about books relating to the mail, postal systems, letters, etc—let me know any titles that come to mind via the forum (you’ll need to be logged in to view this post, and may need to browse around and participate a little before you can reply in this section of the forum). My next review will probably be about E.C.R. Lorac’s mystery, Post After Post-Mortem… but something else might grab me first: you never know.

Hanako's dreamy posts on Instagram caught our attention some years ago. Featuring quirky Japanese mailboxes, pretty stationery and her own beautiful artwork, they made us dream of visiting the “land of the rising sun”… but pandemic years were tricky for making trips abroad, so we did the next best thing, and sent the Little Mail Carriers instead! 😊 Here they are, to report on their adventures!

Kon’nichiwa! Many greetings from Japan, where our host Hanako lives and does her art (including postcards for Postcrossing meetings)! She promised to give us a tour of Tokyo, so let’s get started! First stop: a post box! This is what a normal postbox in Japan looks like.

We headed to the Kyobashi Post Office in Tsukiji, Tokyo. Today the special stamps “International Letter-Writing Week, 2021” were just issued. We had the first-day postmarks put on the postcards and on an envelope made from a museum flyer. The stamps are showing famous woodblock prints by Hokusai. Everyone knows his iconic “The Great Wave off Kanagawa”… but did you know the painting is part of “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji”, or that it used a new kind of blue pigment which revolutionized Japanese prints?

About half of post offices in Japan have their own pictorial postmarks. These postmarks are called 風景印 (fukeiin). We had the fukeiin of Kyobashi Post Office put on our little passport. It illustrates a scene from Sukeroku (known as The Flower of Edo, in English), one of the most famous plays in the Kabuki repertoire.

Kabuki is a type of Japanese classical dance-drama, characterized by elaborate stage makeup, fancy costumes and stylized performances that date back to the Edo period. Why does the fukeiin stamp show Kabuki here? Because the Kyobashi Post Office is located near Kabuki-za, the principal theater for Kabuki plays!

Next, we visited Ueno Station. In Japan, you can find special souvenir stamps like this at railway stations, museums or tourist spots. If you travel around Japan, we really need to bring a notebook for stamp collecting!

Awwww… isn’t it cute? We saw the panda postbox near Ueno Zoo, which is the oldest zoo in Japan. Twin pandas were born here in June 2021, and they were named Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei.

Yay! We found the Pokémon manhole-cover in front of the National Museum of Nature and Science! Hanako says manhole-cover hunting is one of the pleasures of a trip to Japan. There are various kinds of manhole-covers with local design.

Another one is here in front of the Tokyo National Museum! There are many museums in the Ueno area, so you can’t see all of them in one day. If you visit Japan for the first time and need to choose only one museum in Ueno, we heard the Tokyo National Museum is a good one to see, so that’s where we are headed! The building was built in 1937, and is often used as the location for Japanese TV dramas.

We took our time looking around the exhibits. The Tokyo National Museum has many national treasures as their collection. Above is one of them, the Tachi Sword made by Yoshifusa in the 13th century. Have you watched “Seven Samurai”, the Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa? Samurai swords are quite interesting cultural artifacts, not to mention really beautiful.

This work of sculpture titled “Aged Monkey” made by Koun Takamura is famous among Japanese philatelists, because it was selected as the subject of the 60-yen stamp from the Modern Art Series, issued in 1983. Of course, we bought the matching postcard, too!

Aaaaaaaah, the museum shop is a postcard paradise! 😍 How many should we buy?! Can’t decide because all of them look amazing!

It’s about time for lunch! OK, we have soba here today. Soba is a noodle made from buckwheat and is popular as healthy food. Chopped spring onions (also known as scallions) and grated ginger go well with it. The soba restaurant Yabusoba in Ueno was established in 1892. Hanako showed us the cute soba stamp issued in 2016.

After lunch, we came to Tokyo Skytree by bus! This 634 meter-high tower was completed in 2012 and became a new symbol of Tokyo.

We visited the Postal Museum on the 9th floor of Tokyo Solamachi, the shopping mall under Tokyo Skytree. The Skytree postbox warmly welcomed us.

The exhibits in the museum are super interesting for postcrossers! Here are mail carriers’ caps from the early 20th century. The caption says the straw hat was for summer. It’s cool, isn’t it?

And this is a replica of the postal snowmobile in the 1940s and 50s. Wow, we want to try to drive it, it looks like the perfect size for us!

We also saw some cancelling stamps in the early 20th century. It’s always fun seeing old postal tools.

And at last, we arrive at the counter of the old post-office, used between 1920s or 1930s to 1988 at Kanda Sudacho Post Office, in Tokyo. How many postcards and letters have crossed this counter over the years? And how many stamps it must have seen!

Sadly, this is where our tour of Tokyo comes to an end. It was a lot of fun to return to Japan so many years after our trip to Okinawa, to discover a bit more of this fascinating country! Where do you think we should go next?

Thank you Hanako, for showing the little guys so many cool things about Japan! We’re dreaming of visiting and “collecting” all the cool manhole covers and special postmarks… 😍

Alright, let’s do this! We’ve done our best to make sure everything was shipshape with the second most voted design by the judges, and now we’re ready to reveal it!

So jumping right into it, here is 2023's official World Postcard Day postcard, created by illustrator Lisa Saputra (aka lisasaputra) in Indonesia:

Lisa is a postcrosser as well as an indie children’s book illustrator (check out Tomo Kidsbook), and she still found the time to work on an entry for the contest! We love the style and the poetic interpretation of the topic that puts a shiny postcard right at the center of a hug. Congratulations, Lisa! 🎉

Here’s a short text she wrote about her submission:

Once in a blue moon, the two long lost friends meet and hug each other. Their hundreds of letters and postcards roamed the oceans before they finally met. Now they can say, “till we meet again, my dear friend!”

As always, we make the design available for free on the World Postcard Day website, and if you wish, you can print it at a local print shop or online printing service. And like we keep saying, any postcard sent on October 1st is a World Postcard Day postcard — so feel free to mail this or any other postcards you like or have available. They’re all brilliant! If you’re planning to send postcards on the day, we encourage you to share a picture of your postcards next to a mailbox on social media, using the hashtag #WorldPostcardDay, as a way to spread the word.

Let’s roll up our sleeves and start brainstorming ways to spread some happiness into unsuspecting mailboxes, so we can make this the best World Postcard Day yet!

We aim for Postcrossing to be a positive and supportive community, but sadly quite a few of the comments on our previous postcard announcement were not in that spirit… so, after much consideration, we’ve decided to keep the comments on this post closed. As usual, for questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to us.

We’re writing this post to address an important matter concerning the recently concluded World Postcard Day 2023 design contest.

Despite our best efforts, we failed to detect that the winning design of this year’s World Postcard Day contest was based on a stock image, and thus did not follow the rules of the contest (which call for the submission of original artworks, made by the person). Upon becoming aware of this issue, we immediately recalled the design.

Both Paulo and I deeply regret this oversight. We understand and share the anticipation and excitement with which our community, contestants, and global enthusiasts await this special day, and thus recognize the magnitude of this lapse. As the organizers, we truly apologize for not living up to the standards we set for this event.

In light of this, the design that garnered the second highest number of votes will be rightfully declared the contest winner. We are working to finalize and release this new design, which we hope will happen in the next few days. We aim to ensure that every aspect of it aligns with the contest’s rules, especially given the circumstances. To those who have already printed the previous design, we’re really sorry about this.

Going forward, we will reconsider the format of the design contest and what extra measures can be taken to make sure a situation like this does not happen again. We will also take into account the increasing use of AI tools in image creation, a challenge that makes it increasingly harder to determine originality and authorship.

Given the nature of this post, we’ve closed the comments. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to hear from you: for any concerns or feedback, please reach out to us directly.

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

One of the postcards I sent this month (a lovely one of magpies from the “Wild Cards” set by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris) made me think about this a lot: what are the birds like where you are? As I wrote on that postcard, I know that British robins are quite different from North American robins, but I think (and the recipient confirmed) that our magpies are the same. So that’s this month’s writing prompt: let’s talk about birds!

The back garden of the house I grew up in has a lot of bird visitors, because my dad has hung up various different kinds of bird feeders and fat blocks to make it a friendly place for them. There’s running water from a fountain, and to top it off, my dad throws out sultanas to them every day as an extra treat. The main visitors—the ones we always watched for the most—are blackbirds (a kind of thrush, apparently, with the scientific name Turdus merula). They’re really common birds in the UK, but we got to be fond of them and the way they ran around our lawn, officiously trying to chase off other birds.

We actually have a family of blackbirds that visit our garden who all have partial albinism, with just a streak here and there of white against their black feathers. So we can sometimes recognise individuals… and there are also blackbirds who are becoming rather tame, and will come right up to my dad to demand their sultanas. They’re less keen on me, though, since I don’t usually come bearing gifts.

What about you? What birds do you see locally, or which birds do you especially like? You can answer in the comments here, but you can also use it as a prompt for your postcards this month, if you’re not sure what to write!