post office

Not sure about what services your post office has to offer where you live, but in Japan, post offices also provide forms of banking and insurances. Anyway, I recently had to go to the post office to send my passport in for re-newal.

What an expensive thing to do overseas!

700 yen (about US$7)...passport photo
500 yen (about US$5)...special self-addressed envelope
8062 yen (US $75 @ 107.50 yen exchange rate)...international money order (to pay for passport)
2000 yen (about US$20)...handling fee to create the money order
620 yen (about US$6.20)...registered mailing fee (just in case something happens when sending it in...)
Total: 11882 yen (about $118)

passport good for 10 years....priceless!

There is one guy at our post office who is always so nice and patient with me...thank you!

Anyway, while I was waiting for the money order to be made, I noticed that they had these for sale....Hello Kitty stamps.

As some of you know, I am a member of Postcrossing. So, I'm always looking out for Japanese-y postcards and stamps. If you like to send and receive postcards, this is a great way to do it. Most people in Postcrossing have nice profiles and they are easy going, but sometimes you run into a few that are quite demanding, they write things like this in their profiles..."no handmade cards", "please put pretty stamps on the cards you send to me", "no Mt. Fuji cards I'm sick of these"...blah, blah, blah. I think these people should just be happy that someone is sending them a card.

Anyway, these Kitty-chan stamps will soon be making their way around the world. Oh and hopefully my passport will go through smoothly and be back in a couple of weeks.

postcrossing

I am really glad I signed up with Postcrossing. It is a nice way to receive "snail mail" from different countries and a nice way to make new friends.

Today, was especially nice, 4 postcards came at one time!

another way to send a smile

While visiting Meeta's blog, What's for Lunch Honey?, I noticed that someone had posted a comment about this link: Postcrossing.com.

I clicked on the link and immediately signed up. All you need to do, is sign up, they send you an email of the address you need to send your postcard to, send it off with an ID code that they give you (this is so that they can track the cards) and wait to receive your card from a different participant! How easy and fun!

This is my first postcard going to a new friend in Finland!

Can't wait until I get my first card from a new friend--in the meantime, I think I'll get another address (you can send out up to 5 cards to different people) and send out another card...