Cool Stuff

Here's the first in what I hope will be a long line of entries entitled "Cool Stuff".  These are for items that don't really fit under anything else.  I hope you enjoy them.



A few days ago I received something in the mail from a friend.  We became friends through our blogs and I even persuaded her to join Postcrossing.  We both live in Japan, so agreed to swap local Gotochi cards.  I sent her one from Yamagata, and she sent me this lovely card from her prefecture.
My prefecture also features fruit, but ours are cherries.

Along with that cool Gotochi card, I also received this lovely card from her.  As I am a bookworm, this card fits me perfectly!


The other day when I was on my way to my school I found this on the building.  I thought this moth was quite striking. It was more than an inch/2.5 cm long!
Next to this interesting creature there was a small clump of what I assume are its eggs.  They were still there today.  They weren't noticeable unless you knew they were there.

Well, that's about it for things that are new and interesting and of course, cool.  I hope to bring you more another time.  


7 comments:

Crafty Tokyo Mama said...

I haven't seen any Gotochi cards here, but will start keeping an eye open for them. Awaji has some unique Hello Kitty goods featuring Kitty wearing an onion hat and costume. They are pretty ugly and I resist buying them. Awaji is famous for onions.

Helen said...

Check your post office! As far as I know, they are only available in post offices. Some of them get sold out quite quickly. Now that I've started to collect them, I make a point of hitting the post offices in any prefecture that I go to.

Aomori has a garlic as one of their cards! You might have onions for your prefecture. I'm not sure.

Thanks for visiting :-)

Crafty Tokyo Mama said...

I'm well-known at my local post offices as "that foreigner who is a pushover for new stamps". I've never seen one of those gotochi cards yet though. Will have to ask about them next time. The Hello Kitty stamps are already sold out!
Hey, I signed up for Postcrossing! I've already sent two cards and will do more this week. Can't wait to see what comes in and from where. Thank you for introducing me to this fun hobby!

Helen said...

Wow! Congratulations on joining up! I hope you enjoy it. If you have any questions about Postcrossing, please ask away.

And, your post office probably should have some Gotochi cards. Mine is a small branch and they have all of them. They might even have mail box ones too. Just watch if you want to send Gotochi cards overseas, it's quite expensive and I think some post offices don't let you do that.

No more Hello Kitty stamps? Darn! They were cute. I got some last year and liked them because I didn't have to lick them! (Now I use a sponge :-)

Thanks for letting me know!

Helen said...

I found the URL for the Japan Post Office Gotochi cards. You can find information about them in Japanese at http://www.postacollect.com/gotochi/index.html?
You can also see what's available for your prefecture if you click on the map.
I think you'll have to copy and paste the address.

Crafty Tokyo Mama said...

Thanks for the link. Will check it out today. I have seen the mail box post cards and picked one up to look at it, but put it back. Is it rare???

Helen said...

No, sorry! The post box cards are in each post office. What is cool is that many of them have the address of the post office that you got them at on the front. We noticed that in our local tiny post office.
Some I've seen on postcrossing have different designs depending on the season, those are a little rarer!
And...word of warning...beware of people overseas asking you to trade Gotochi cards. Both my husband and I have received many emails asking us to trade them. Of course you can if you want, but, it gets a bit annoying after a while. We've actually written in capital letters on our profiles that we don't trade them!

Too much info I guess! Sorry....