Greetings From….

My letter writing has been a bit lackluster, I am even finding hard to keep up with this blog. However, recently I've restarted swapping postcards rather than write letter. This is something I have not done since Japan where I even have a dedicated IG account I @rgswap which I have starting using again.

When I was in Japan I used to swap Gotochi postcards which were Japanese prefectural postcards sold via the JPost. Gotochi postcard are only available its own prefecture in post office branches. Now I'm back home the only postcards I can swap are the Greetings From series from Postal Love.This has been quite fun to start and in many ways better that Gotochi as it’s international so there's quite a few countries to collect so far got about 20.

Each postcard has information and country such as population, famous people, favourite pastimes and also includes how many Postcrossers the country has. Fortunately I've got a nice collection of washi tape and stickers with a UK theme to go with my Greetings From United Kingdom postcards. It’s fun and nice just to make them extra bit special and it's not always reciprocated that's that's not the point. I enjoy doing it I just hope I can rise to the challenge to find other countries to try and swaps with.

I’m finding a lot of countries/people but I am finding myself getting quite into trying to find people willing to swap for non GF or that have UK already! You can see postcards I have sent and received on my IG accounts. I have considered asking people to write in the native languages to match the postcard so I can try and translate them, not sure yet.

If I were giving tips to anyone thinking about collecting them I would say don't just look at the hashtags (#gfpostcard #gfswap etc.) look at the pictures that person is tagged in to see what they're sending and receiving also check the comments on pictures.

Happy swapping!

Yamada Stationery

I didn't do a post on meeting Yen Fong of Tabiyo which was great. We ended up going to Bunbougu Cafe or the Stationery Cafe. However, I was particularly underwhelmed by the Bunbougu Cafe they had a few nice things but in my opinion overpriced as was the coffee Maybe the bad weather and my tooth ace made has coloured my opinion. So ye not really blog worthy. 

But this month I was able to meet Vivian another IG friend visiting Japan. We've exchange postcard and other mail for a while was it was quiet nice to finally meet. We went to Mitaka we had intended to go to Kichioji. We ended up Yamada Stationery. So much stationery and postally goodness. Yamada is great as it didn't just have the usual zakka and stationery goods but a few postal related things.

They stock old Japanese unused stamps some of which I assume can be used. And of course the usual packets of used international stamps. I also picked up some postcard with postal or stamp themes. By the way you'd probably be better of taking at look at Vivian's blog she'll have much more and much better pictures than me if she does a post on it. But her a few pictures form the shop and my spoils! 

  

   

At the till