Postcards and Snail Mail — Rediscovering Slow Communications through Penpals and Postcrossing

On our trip to Osaka, I found out postcards still exist so I bought a bunch for my own personal souvenirs from the places we visited. I then bought a photo album for my favorite ones when I got home.

The ones I got from the Fukuda Art Museum were prints of the current exhibit we just saw so they were a perfect souvenir for that pocket of time we got to experience. Of course I got a bunch of the prints that had cats in them. It's nice to know that rich people from so many years ago decided to decorate their houses with paintings of cats, too.

Postcrossing

Sending postcards to random strangers

I can't remember now how I came across Postcrossing. Basically it's a website where you can sign up and you are then given a random member and their address which you can send a postcard to. Members can list their interests and types of postcards they would like to receive on their profile as a guide. It's not mandatory, you can always send whatever postcard you have on hand even if nothing matches the receiver's requests.

Hello! I have two cats, I have a personal blog, I like to crochet. I also like cooking, reading, mostly sci-fi, horror, and slice-of-life. You can tell me about your most recent read or your favorite food.

I would love to receive (not required):
- cat-themed cards with cat stickers
- a watercolor painting
- your country's national flower or fruit
- kim namjoon
- if you are an artist, I would love to receive a handmade card

Please no AI “art” cards.

I have this written on my profile so the photo below is my favorite batch of incoming (received) postcards so far.

The left postcard is stamped and postmarked with the same type of bird. And now that about it I think the postcard also had the same bird. I just learned that this is called a maximum card, which would have been good to acknowledge with the sender but I didn't know it then.

Postcrossers could also choose to decorate the back of the card whichever way they like. I've gotten cards with lots of stickers and washi tape.

I love reading the tidbits about themselves postcrossers choose to write into the short message they manage to cram into the space on the back of the postcard.

This was my latest batch of outgoing postcards. I was able to buy a bunch of washi tape and stickers from Daiso so I was finally able to decorate the back of the cards. I don't think it's as pretty as others can do it yet, but it's still pretty cute.

Snail Mail

Like texting but longer and slower

My sister sent me a letter one day, and I was like, hey, let me do that with strangers, too. So I went on the penpalsover30 subreddit and posted a brief message about myself and what I was looking for. Mostly something similar as to my Postcrossing profile, just a bit more detailed about the books and shows I enjoy.

A couple of users messaged me and we started chatting a bit online first, and now I have two people I've sent the first letter to, and one person who sent the first letter to me.

I have yet to hear back from the first two letters I sent out, who knows if my letters even got to them, but I guess that't the beauty of it, right?