Week 7: Postcrossing

This post is going to be a short one. I know, I know, I’m ridiculously behind. I’m still writing about posts from mid March, when we’re nearing the end of April. But that’s why this one is going to be short. If I make them all slightly shorter, especially the ones that aren’t really worth writing 3 pages of text about. So here it goes.

Once upon a time I realized that I liked getting postcards. Like, a lot.  So much, in fact, that I would scour stores for postcards whenever I travelled anywhere in the hopes that if I sent it to one of my friends, they would be nice enough to send a postcard back.

Through this method, my postcard collection slowly grew larger and larger over the last year or so. This is what it looked like when I first started decorating my apartment in Kuriyama:

And this is what it looks like now:

This, however, is hardly something new. Big deal, right?

No, the new thing is my discovery of the coolest website in recent history, www.postcrossing.com. On this website, you sign up for a profile and you are given random addresses and names of people who would like to receive real life postcards from you. In return, once they have registered a postcard you’ve sent them, your address is put out there, and you will receive one from someone random in return.

The idea is simple and brilliant. You can track where your postcards go, where they are from, and even do direct swaps via the site. It is all very exciting. So with that in mind, I figured my new thing of the week would be to send and receive postcards to and from COMPLETE STRANGERS.

So I did. And it was awesome.

I made an account, wrote a little blurb about myself, then asked for 5 addresses to send postcards to. I ended up with explicit instructions to send 2 postcards to Russia, 1 to Belarus, 1 to Poland and 1 to Germany. I wrote out my postcards, super excited, and went to the post office to mail them.

The lady at the post office seemed a little confused as to why I was sending these postcards to all these crazy places, but since I visit the Kuriyama post office at least once a week to send things to strange places, I think she was used to me by now. I just walked in, and she said “Canada ni okuru?” (do you want to send this to Canada?)


I was like “Nope! ALL OF THESE CRAZY PLACE INSTEAD!” and her mind was blown.

After I sent the 5 postcards, I waited and waited. So far, I have only gotten one postcard back, but I’m hoping to get more soon. I got this one from a lovely girl in China! Isn’t it cute?

Later on today, I’m going to head to the post office to send some more postcards. I’m looking forward to hearing that they’ve been received and hopefully getting more in return! I think this is one adventure I’m going to be sticking with!

If anyone is interested in postcrossing, let me know! Also if anyone would like a postcard or to send me one, also let me know!


Update: Just got home. Received a lovely postcard from Moscow in the mail! Check it out!