While many/most “inbound correspondence” has been documented in a few recent videos {see: Digging into a Santa size sack of correspondence & Broken Bone Birthday Postcard Storytime}, a few batches and items are otherwise documented within in snapshots, as well as capturing many outgoing dispatches in layouts – as i’m so predictably fond of capturing as i scribble in Doctor’s offices, hospitals, cafés and in bed.
So: What follows is a round-up for recent – vaguely from June to Oct 2024 – postal and letter-writing-adjacent items, mildly annotated contemporaneously:
Oct. 25
Made a rough draft of the new year card, and then did another which i thought would be the “actual one” – but just didn’t come together nicely
Found a crumpled up piece of gold origami paper and came across my watercolor pencils and have a new concept in mind to try
PS Talking about New York cards with my in-laws in Japan:
They’re feeling like “giving up” on the tradition as rates just went from ¥63-¥84 each
Each year fewer and fewer are exchanged
{Still, literally billions delivered each New Year’s Day}
Oct 18: Diary: hospitals, lunch, postcards, bus… just the same + ramen & moon
Oct. 13
My goodness, what started with an audio riff recorded somewhere I can’t even imagine, archived dutifully, lost and found so to speak – turned into a trans oceanic musical songscape delivered as an aural postcard which then flipped around and backwards as a paper postcard printed on watercolor paper from a postbox outside in Immigration office in Sri Lanka with the very important words “foreign letters” (painted in three scripts, a top a patina’d blue time portal)… Every detail matters
Sept. 26
just mailed 4 packages of a lovely (i think anyway) poetry magazine/folio to friends overseas and did so with a generic postage seal instead of glorious stamps // feel like a Philistine but my goodness, required online paperwork, printed and taped to send simple “printed matter”
Sept. 25
I’m sure not just me (or maybe it is) but drives me nuts how Canada Post doesn’t put a cancellation franking on stamps
The mailing date & location are so important for so many reasons besides aesthetics and recordkeeping. Not just me is it?
My other also minor gripe is that Japan Post Shop only has one design of ¥100 international postcard stamps available :(
Before last year’s price increase from ¥70, there were various designs and special editions available
Sept. 20
Postcards made from postboxes in Olympia (Greece), the Vatican, Rome, Izumo (Japan), and a few places in Sri Lanka Aside: Domestic postcards going upwards from ¥63 – last year, internationals went from ¥70 to ¥100
Diary:
2 loads of laundry folded
2 loads dishwasher
37° thick & heavy outside
Still wearing summer jimbei
Wife outside with excavator
Son really wants to go to public hot baths ♨️ after school yet im not rated for slippery floors
Writing postcards, trying to beat the blues 📫
Sept. 15
Thinking about new year cards, I have a whole concept in mind… Maybe I’ll start crafting this week
Sept. 12
Morning mail
Fuzzy stamps
Need coffee
To read letters
Sept. 6
Another batch, albeit a small batch, of postcards into the postbox – feeling really blue since busting the foot like i’m inconveniencing everyone and just getting around to my stash of stationery is a bit of a drag, here we are, slowly slowly
Happy journey paper friends, I hope you find the recipient pleased
PS Since I broke my foot, I’ve not been letting myself have any fun because feeling so blue about inconveniencing others ~~~ so: Today, freshened up the room, my head and scribbled a few #postcards Pardon lousy photos
Alt variations:
Sept. 3
I keep thinking about this “drifting post office” for letters to passed family, lost friends, unforgotten lovers, strangers unmet & possibly versions of yourself – on Awashina, Japan (and a guesthouse for sale nearby)
Sept. 1
Don’t mind me, I’m just hitting the oxygen tank and sharing this and that from my lost channels because I’m clearly fragile and going a little bit loopy, ie:
- another podcast feed
- recent vid stories
- more postcards
- Letters from Russia epistolary novella
- folding laundry
Aug. 31
(from Parthasarathi Mukherjee)
“Got it yesterday all the way from #Japan with two nice #stamps . Many thanks”
Aug. 25 (pardon if repeats)
Batch of Postal “Still Lifes” (in situ)
For enthusiasts and collectors – some you’ve seen before perhaps but fiddling while uploading a video about… yup, postcards, incoming
Arranged and snapped mostly at coffee shops, museums, drs offices before dropping in the postbox (in some cases, snapping attractive batches of received post)
My have 100s of these from over the years, do you?
Aug. 25
It’s official, World Postcard Day, a day to send me a postcard :) well you can send anyone a postcard but still, here’s my address to make it handy
Aug. 16
I broke my foot
Canceled vacation
My wife and son wrangled up a birthday party
Included a custom cake with a piglet called “Toot”
From a book, do you know it?
Toot loves to travel and send postcards, friend Puddle prefers to stay home
Then the cake maker sent me a postcard with a picture of the cake on it!
So I made a video about this postcard, plus a bunch of other recent postcards
Made lo-fi style from my bedroom with some usual digressions and anecdotes
Aug. 15
Do you have a sweet little writing corner? a fold out desk? A stash of pens and stationery? I hope so.
Aug. 8
Dr office postcards – a mix of my mug and Yumeji, Hiroshige, Hokusai art prints
(the pink seats at the medical clinic was too great of a backdrop to pass up)
{Yes, I’m taking photos of #Postcards on the bench at a doctors office before injections… Totally normal behavior}
Aug. 6
Tough construction dudes outside, next steps after pouring concrete yesterday for “project caboose”…
Meanwhile, me, weary so very weary, in bed with solar powered air conditioning, teas, potions and a little bamboo desk writing letters, postcards, a few dossiers… odds and ends, stamps & pens.
I received some lovely things recently – keep on meaning to share but that’s kind of what I’m always doing, meaning to share something with you. We just have to be patient, right?
I used to love summer so much with road trips, festivals, concerts, hikes, camping… all of it but now, I’m just not built for summers, here anyhow. So I just keep waiting for October.
However in a week or so, we’re doing a mini road trip to Ehime prefecture on Shikoku, the fourth largest island in Japan – going across the mighty bridges crossing the inland sea.
We will visit Ryoko’s University jazz club friends, the famous Dogo Onsen #SpiritedAway and pilgrimage the memorial museum to the murdered filmmaker Itami Juzo + an animal park for kids (where I will find a shady place and a nice coffee), and hopefully get to see some of the islands we cross over on the way there.
I love this area and wish we had more time but hey, life is infinite after all – just excited to get a bit of fresh inspiration but first, I got to get my body somewhat functioning so I can go with the flow.
Packing light but probably take ukulele and oxygen tank, such times.
Will be going during O-bon holiday a special time when the spirits of our passed away ancestors come back to visit their homes. Most folks return to their hometown/village to clean graces and light a wee fire to guide the spirits home. We’re fortunate to live during nearby our ancestors graves so we’ve got that covered so instead a bit of a track which happens to coincide with my birthday. 8/16 = 54
Anyway, I wrote some letters, how are you?
July 31
A stack more postcards, into the postbox wormhole… variety of domestic (Tochigi, Gifu) and international (New Westminster, Vancouver, Virginia Beach, West Bengal etc) mix of handmade cornball snaps and art by Yumeji Takahisa. Dropped in the postbox by my diligent assistant Ichiro (who hijacked the shot of his goofy papa on the Shodoshima beach with a pink flower in his hair, someone’s missing out, sorry)
Update: Sept. 2, I snuck the stolen postcard back and stashed in the mail when Ichi wasn’t looking ~ so it was just extra late for someone’s birthday
July 28
Inbound: Reading recent cards and letters while at dentist office:
- Flowery postcard hello from Taiwan via Japan
- Secret agent correspondence from agent Byzantine, from Scandinavia via Virginia
- Dossier from Cape Cod w/ splendid bookmarks + fond greetings on motel letterhead
July 16
A trio of postcards bound to Massachusetts, Connecticut (USA) and Hamburg (Germany)
Standard recent DIY designs with bonus 1¥ postal bear stamp
PS 1 is my 2nd ever dispatch for @postcrossing
Bonus details:
July 12
Vintage card of Himeji castle – just one stop up the tracks on the Shinkansen from us – and noted to be probably the best original castle as most were destroyed during the war and thus rebuild while this one was relatively untouched… Requires a lot of walking so I gaze at it from a distance
Includes a lucky “year of the Dragon stamp” with the national raffle numbers. Ya see, on New Year’s morning, several billion, really, postcards are dropped off around Japan by the diligent postal workers, many zooming around on their awesome super cub scooters – after perusing the cards while enjoying special delicacies, folks open up the newspaper and compare the numbers on the stamps &/or pre-printed cards from @japanposthd_official to see if they won something special.
I won a couple of stamps a few times but no “trip to Hawaii”which is fine, been there already
Notably, this is my first submission to @postcrossing – after sending 100s, sometimes 1000s of per year, finally sent 1st official Post Crossing card! {It’s like a managed penpal exchange club – You are given an address to someone somewhere somewhere along with a little profile about them}
Turns out this dispatch is going from my new “forever home” of #Okayama to just up road from Evergreen College in Olympia WA & down from the way from Vancouver CAN – both of which were my “hometown” for many years in different errors… i mean eras – ha!
Hooray for Castles & Postcards! So much nuance on a couple slips of paper
July 10
Talked to my uncle
Help Ichiro find his field guide to bees, hornets and wasps
Ryoko went to get a haircut
Caught up with NHL draft
Scribbling some #postcards
Drinking traditional Chinese medicine tea in #Tintin mug
July 9
Saw hundreds of authentic vintage Hokusai & Hiroshige woodblock prints, cleared out the gift shop, coffee at the Museum café and scribbled a postcard to a friend. Hitting all the marks for me
Quite emotional seeing these treasures in real life – some of you might be familiar with van Gogh’s remix on this #Hiroshige masterpiece – albeit reduced to #postcard form
June 9
When feeling frustrated & overwhelmed by life – doctors, dentists, discouragement by “everything electronic and digital in my life” (website, email, eSIM, wi-fi) I go back to simple pleasure of postcards + a visit to the post office with nice chitchat with the kind lady.
June 2
Fiddling through scrapbooks of ephemera, in this case from Thailand and Nepal, and found a note left to my future self in the form of these pressed and dried flowers. I think I know what the message means…
Finally:
Love letters, Loved
Written with stick & blood ink
Fingerprint for proof
Get in on the fun with mixed-media dossier of your own. Yup, made with love 😉
Fondly, daveo
Alas, my “postcard tracker” database seems to be maxed out but who’s keeping score anyway?
Parting Shot
from Megacurve, Kyoto
