Yokohama Stamps

Yokohama stamps

Just a selection from the 150th stamps for the opening of Yokohama, in celebration of several days’ work in Yokohama. It was nice to get out of the Tokyo grind. I have few chances to go, but I always enjoy my visits to Yokohama. The only disappointing thing on the most recent job was not being able eat lunch in Chinatown!

Below is some relevant text from the infomapjapan.com website:

In 1859, Yokohama opened its port to Commodore Perry and his "Black Ships", ending Japan's national isolation policy and making the city the base for foreign trade in Japan. This year marks the 150th anniversary of this event and to commemorate this momentous occasion, the city of Yokohama is sponsoring "EXPO Y150". This special exposition will focus on the history and attractions of the city and will be based on Yokohama's three symbols - the sea, city and nature.

日本語hints:
the grind = the usual pattern. To “get out of the grind” is to break the pattern, to do something (and therefore interesting)

relevant = related, connected 関係がある
isolation policy = 鎖国
momemtous = very important, historic

Martha Washington 1 1/2

So far all the American Presidents have been men. And their wives are called First Ladies. Martha Washington was the wife of the first US President, George Washington, and is thus known as the first First Lady.

I first noticed this stamp because of the unusual denomination, 1 1/2 cents. Much later, I went to Wikipedia for some quick research about her and was quite surprised. She married at age 18 to a man two decades her senior (38). He was well-off and left her well-to-do when he passed away less than a decade later.

Martha and George married when both were 27. They had no children together but raised the two children from Martha's first marriage, although both of them died well before their parents. She was initially opposed to George becoming President and refused to attend the Inauguration ceremonies.

She inherited many slaves from her first husband. George Washington was also a slave owner, though he later decided that slavery was repugnant and freed all his slaves shortly before his death.

Also from Wikipedia:
In 1902 Martha Washington became the first American woman to be commemorated by a U.S. postage stamp. It was an 8 cent stamp. In 1923, a second stamp was issued in her honor, a 4 cent. The third Martha Washington stamp, of 1½¢ denomination, was issued in 1938.

日本語 hints
decade = ten years
well-off and well-to do: both phrases mean wealthy, having much money, being rich
pass away = a formal way to say "die"
Inauguration = 大統領の就任式
slave = 奴隷
repugnant = disgusting, とても嫌な

Japanese stamp museum

I have lived in Tokyo for 15 years and have used the circular / loop line around the city, the Yamanote line, regularly throughout that time. So I have seen the stamp museum (切手博物館) near Mejiro Station endless times from the train and I have wondered about it for quite a while.

There seem to be museums everywhere for everything in Tokyo. One of my favorites is the parasite museum, near Meguro Station, about 20 minutes away on the same Yamanote line. Nothing like witnessing a six-meter long tapeworm together with your date!

Anyway, I finally made it to the stamp museum for the first time. It was a short visit, but well worth it. The staff were all friendly and treated me like a normal visitor. My only complaint was the high cost to photocopy a page -but I must admit it was wonderful to be surrounded by so many stamp-related materials. Otherwise, I was extremely pleased with my visit in every way. Perhaps the most interesting thing to me was the speed with which workers were filing stamps away in the albums of the massive collection.

I look forward to my next visit and hope I will have more time to talk with the friendly staff and learn more about stamp collecting in Japan.

日本語hints:

parasite - 寄生虫 we can talk about one animal living off another - or about older children who stay at home too long, surviving off their parents

tapeworm -　サナダムシ

complaint - 文句 note that this differs from "claim", which is highly overused in Japan

massive - 巨大、大量の

Japanese oldies

Here is a selection of older Japanese stamps I received recently. Quite a few of them are attractive, but two in particular make a nice pair.

Start with the red stamp which is the third stamp in the second row / middle row. It shows an airplane (a bomber, I first imagined) flying over a pagoda – perhaps symbolic of new technology emerging from traditional culture?

Then look at the first stamp in the third row / bottom row. It is another airplane (another bomber?), but this one is passing in front of a giant Buddha statue – perhaps capturing the post-War mood in Japan?

Another interesting point for me was the denomination – several of the stamps were marked in 銭 or sen, much older in use (and smaller in value) than the currently-used 円 or ￥ , yen. I don’t see the Japanese kanji character for 銭 very often these days. I used to see it every night when I went to the 銭湯 or public bath, but those are closing down all over Japan.

Please note that I used the phrase “Japanese kanji character” in this case. Almost all Japanese people will call these “Chinese characters” because the Japanese system of writing was imported from China. In a Japanese cultural context, that makes sense.

But in an English-speaking context, that is very confusing. The characters used for writing in China – 汉字 or hanzi in Chinese – are “Chinese characters” to an English speaker. Sometimes they are written the same as Japanese characters, sometimes not. There are even more differences now than in the past due to the simplification of characters on the mainland.

The Japanese character 銭 is now written as 钱 on the mainland, and it is pronounced “qian” with a rising tone. It is seen and heard commonly in the very useful Chinese phrase “多少钱?”. This is read “duo shao qian” and is used for asking how much something costs.

日本語 hints
- row = 列、横列、行列 (horizontal, or across)
- column = 列、縦列 (vertical, or up and down)
- bomber = an airplane which carries and drops bombs (爆撃機)
- pagoda = 塔 The word “pagoda” is actually a loan word from Portugeuse into English.
- symbolic = 象徴
- simplification = making things easier or simpler; 簡単化 By the way, “simplified characters” can be called 簡体字\
- mainland (China) = 大陸 , used to refer to China separate from Taiwan (Taiwan does not use simplified characters)

Hungary stamps

This began as a short writing on the boring stamps of Hungary. By chance, I came across a large number of stamps from Hungary, all issued some years ago. I sorted them by denomination as usual. There were buildings, buildings, and more buildings. This really cemented my image of Eastern European countries issuing large numbers of boring stamps, basically featuring peoples’ faces or, well, buildings.

But I found a few exceptions, such as this series of airplane stamps. Curiously, all of them are biplanes, with two sets of wings. That was about it for Hungarian stamps, so far as I knew.

On a lark, I did some googling and found that recent stamps from Hungary are much more colorful and varied in theme. A particularly interesting recent release is a stamp commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille, who developed the system by which blind people can read text by passing their fingers over raised dots. The Hungarian stamp includes writing in Braille – as does a US commemorative coin to be released this year.

日本語hints:
boring – you probably know the meaning of this word (つまらない、退屈), but be sure to separate boring vs. bored. –ed adjectives (interested, overwhelmed) describe how you or I feel, while –ing adjectives (interesting, overwhelming) describe the cause or source of the feeling (the movie was interesting; the blog was boring). For example: I read a boring blog, and so I felt bored.

cement an image: “cement” can sometimes be used as a verb, meaning to solidify or to fix permanently

biplane: 複葉機, an airplane with two sets of wings (see the stamps). Yes, there is also such thing as a triplane (三葉飛行機), though I have not found any pictured on Hungarian stamps so far. But this does bring us to the exciting topic of number-related prefixes (接頭語、接頭辞). “bi” and “di” can both be used for “two” – bicycle, bilateral discussions. “tri” can be used for “three” – tricycle, triangle. There is an old George Carlin joke involving “bi” and “try”, but we’ll leave that aside for now.

“on a lark” = on a whim, just for fun, no special reason. Online dictionaries give me いたずらで or other meanings which don’t feel quite right. I think it is used more commonly as なんとなく.

commemorate: 記念する

Braille: 点字、点字法

dendrobium

Here are three stamps from The Philippines which caught my eye. The one in the center is a dendrobium. Some years back, I was teaching a person who had greatly surprised me by sharing that his hobby was gardening (on the balcony of his apartment). I expressed interest in his flowers, and he brought me a dendrobium cut from his own plant. I thought that was quite nice.

Back to the Philippines - I have recently come across a fairly large collection of older Philippines stamps, one spanning several decades. I was delighted to have so many more stamps from the Philippines, as I had very few before this. But there was one problem: how to arrange them.

Many people arrange their stamps chronologically. But I have no information about the years most of my stamps were issued (nor time to research it). So I have been arranging them in ascending order by denomination: starting with the smallest and moving to the largest.

But on the stamps from the Philippines, I found several denominations: "cents", "s", "p", "centavos", and the word "koreo". I emailed a friend and got a quick response: "koreo" means "postage stamp" in Tagalog. "P" is for "pesos", which are larger than centavos / cents / "s".

More Philppines stamp photos to come...

日本語 hints:
dendrobium: a type of orchid or 欄
catch someone's eye: get one's attention
balcony = ベランダ
to span several decades: a decade = 10 years, so this collection has about 30 years' worth of stamps
chronological: in order by year, from oldest to most recent (年代順?)
in ascending order: from smallest to largest
denomination: 種類 or 単位、金額
tagalog: one of the main languages used in the Philippines

Russian memories

40 years back, the Russians launched this stamp, not long after I had appeared on the planet. Can you feel the Socialist glory with all those shades and hues of red?

This stamp came to me a couple weeks back, the lone Russian stamp in a pile of stamps from (mostly) Southeast Asian countries. How it got into the pile, I will never know. But it took me back to my junior high school days.

I was the penultimate geek, the introverted smart kid with no social skills whatsoever. Over the years, I naturally bonded with others who did not fit in. One of my good friends was YS, whose family had just arrived from Russia. This would have been the late 70s, I think, not a time known for the open-mindedness of middle school students in Texas.

He was a smart kid and well-motivated but had no friends besides me. We rode the bus together and one day a bunch of local rednecks-in-the-making were trying to start trouble with him as we got off the bus. This was a couple years before I would dive into Gandhi, MLK Jr., and Thoreau, but I knew something was wrong and that I needed to do something.

I stood next to my friend and interposed my body between him and those who would taunt or strike him. I have no idea why they didn't try to attack me at that point. Neither of us said anything back to them. He just kept walking and I kept shielding him with my body. Finally they got bored and left us alone.

We never talked about that incident. There were much more important things to talk about, such as classes in school and the stamps he had smuggled out of Russia. Hard to believe today, but apparently it was a big deal at that time. Still, it can be tough to separate a boy from his stamps.

He gave me a couple and they briefly rekindled my interest in stamp collecting, which had fizzled by the time I moved from Nebraska to Texas. These were classic Russian space program stamps, unusual in size and a rarity for me.

They lie buried somewhere in a mountain of books and papers and other debris in my father's basement in Nebraska. Seeing this stamp, I need to get back to Nebraska and dig those others out.

two more from Africa

Zambia this time, not one of the usual places I get stamps from. Both are self-reflexive, stamps about stamp collecting, which is a first for me. It would be really fitting to get the actual stamps shown on these stamps, and put them all together. And then if there were a stamp of the stamps OF the stamps...doubly self-reflexive?

it seems there was a kind of stamp collectors' gathering in London in 1990 (almost two decades ago...) - I can't imagine whether it would have been exciting or dreary.

日本語 hints:
self-reflexive: 自己を映し出す (maybe self-referential is better: 文字／作品が自己に言及した - from Canon dictionary

decade = ten years. Note other deca / deci / 10 -related words like decathlon (Olympic sport with 10 events), deciliter. By the way, when my wife was 10 months pregnant, she wore デカパン. So deca- or deci- is a prefix (接頭語、接頭辞) related to the number ten.

dreary = dull and boring

two from Africa

I have only a handful of stamps from African nations, but just ran across several at once. Here is a pair from Ghana. And an unusual pair at that - the Queen of England together with a fertility doll?? It was random chance, how they came to me.

日本語 hints
only a handful = a very small number of
run across = find by accident; and unplanned discovery
fertility doll....someone help me here. I find things like 生産力 and 豊穣 in the dictionary, but that doesn't feel right.

Also, notice that "pair", even though it contains two items, is treated as singular for grammar purposes: This pair of stamps IS from Ghana.

more Chinese birds

Here are a couple more bird stamps from China which caught my eye lately. I don't have a regular source for Chinese stamps yet, so they come in on a highly irregular basis. When I lived in China in 1999, lots of people were collecting stamps. I sometimes brought stamps over from Japan and everybody wanted them. Now when I ask my Chinese friends if they know anyone who wants to trade stamps with me, the answer is always the same: no.

日本語 hints:

Today's vocabulary is not too tough. Only one thing stands out: the prices of the stamps, 1.6 元 and 2 元. Almost all Japanese people give　元 a Japanese reading, "gen", even when speaking English. But no English speaker would ever understand this. It would be better (no, correct) to use the Chinese "yuan", which is spoken in a rising, second tone. It sounds a bit like the English word "you" and the letter "n" but spoken quickly: you-en. Or, more simply, it would also be correct to use "RMB", the internationally known abbreviation for 人民币, or ren min bi, another way to express the currency in China.

There, now we have two nice vocabulary words:
abbreviation = 頭文字
currency = 通貨, the unit of money used in a country. The currency in Japan is the yen.

nature vs. politics

This stamp collecting thing was ostensibly for my daughter and I to do something together, though her enthusiasm has faded over the weeks.

From the start, she was drawn to brightly colored stamps with pictures of nature: flowers, animals, and the like. And she had no interest whatsoever in stamps with political themes, like flags or portraits of politicians.

America seems to put out an endless array of politically-oriented stamps. Flags and flags and flags - and none of these have any interest for my daughter.

Hey, if you were six years old, which of the stamps in this picture would you choose?

日本語 hints:
ostensibly = 表面上
enthusiasm = 熱狂、強い興味 Note that this is a noun; the adjective is enthusiastic. (She was enthusiastic about stamp collecting)
political -- this is an adjective, be sure not to mix it with nouns like politics or politician
an endless array = a very large number of
"if you were....would" is a very useful expression

Georgia on my Mind

Currently, I get most of my stamps in a random fashion, a few here and a few there. I am not actively searching or organizing along one theme. Right now, I welcome all stamps. But as the collection grows, it will be time to focus and prune. I may move toward collecting sets.

This stamp is obviously from a set of stamps for the 50 states. I only have two of them so far, so I have my work cut out for me. Georgia is not really a state I would have preferred to start with. I have never been a big fan of the Southern states, though I can see why other people are.

日本語 hints:
in a random fashion = not planned, by chance

theme --- be careful about pronunciation - this should be one syllable (音節), not two. The vowel sound is a long "e" (it rhymes with "dream" and "steam") and the last sound is the consonant (子音) "m". So be careful about the typical Japanese katakana pronunciation, te-ma.

prune = usually a noun, a kind of food, 干しスモモ

have my work cut out for me = I have started a big job, I have a lot of work to do

have never been a big fan of = have never liked very much

Frog and dragonfly

Here is a pair of Japanese stamps that caught my eye, a frog and dragonfly. There may be more in the series, but I only have these two so far. The frog reminds me of some frogs I met near 生駒 on a small mountain. The dragonfly reminds me of the end of every summer, when there are suddenly dragonflies flying everywhere. I also remember the Nagoya Expo. I took part in a kendo demonstration there and I watched the dragonflies buzzing about a nearby pond before my match. I liked how they were almost completely still, then suddenly burst forward with speed - much like kendo, I thought. I tried to have that feeling during my match, but I lost to my friend and old nemesis from Canada. But many of the teachers watching said I scored a nice 面 men shot to open the match.

日本語 hints:
catch one's eye = get someone's attention
dragonfly = 蜻蛉 (should be clear from context, but..)
A reminds me of B = makes me think of something
Nagoya Expo = 名古屋万博
kendo = kendo
my old nemesis = 昔からの敵
面 = men (everyone in the world who practices kendo uses the Japanese words)

3 Australian birds

I got back into stamp collecting primarily as a way to do something together with my daughter. She was quite interested for a short while but her interest has been waning lately. Still, every time we get new stamps, she helps me sort them and chooses which ones she wants to keep for her collection (I get the leftovers).

She has always preferred brightly colored stamps with plants or animals on them. That means I have a lot of stamps with politicians and flags and monuments on them! Anyway, here are three birds from our Australia page. Australia seems to issue a large proportion of nature-related stamps like these.

One other thing - notice that the value is given as "20c" or "40c" - only the letter "c", not the cent mark I am used to, a lower case "c" with a vertical line running through it.

日本語hints:
get back into = become interested in again
interest has been waning = losing some interest, not as exciting as before
leftovers = 残り物, usually used for food but can be almost anything
vertical = 縦 (and horizontal = 横)

American music stamps set

Here is a great set of stamps from about 15 years back, celebrating the contributions of African-American musicians to American culture. I wouldn't mind enlarging a couple of these (Billie comes to mind) to hang on the wall as pictures. Some years back I taught a course using Billie Holiday's lyrics for English study. It was more difficult than I expected but was a good experience overall.

日本語 hints:
enlarge = to make larger, 拡大する the opposite is reduce, to make smaller. Your photocopy machine might have buttons like this

lyrics = the words to a song, 歌詞

Dick Bruna stamps

I keep finding more and more of these Dick Bruna stamps (only from Japan so far). I have never been a big Dick Bruna fan, but as my daughter went through the mandatory Miffy phase I had to get more comfortable with his style. One picture shows those I have collected so far; the other shows three stamps with unusual shapes.

Many thanks to The Venerable Chofu Ladies, from whom several of these stamps were received.

日本語 hints:
have never been a big xxx fan - そんなに好きではありません
mandatory - not optional, not a choice, 義務的な、強制的な (?)
go through a phase

Red bird from China

Here is another Chinese stamp I like - sorry the picture is blurry. I am still getting used to a new camera.

There is a type of art in China which uses scissors to cut exquisite pieces of art with minute detail. Almost 20 years ago, my then-tai ji quan teacher brought back some of these works for us in her classes. I have always treasured mine, so I was pleased to find a stamp showing the same type of artwork.

日本語 hints:
blurry = out of focus, ぼやけた (?)
exquisite = この上なくすぐれた、優雅な、等

Notice that "treasure" is used as a verb here - 大事にする、重んじる

bugs in Japan

These are part of a larger series - only two come to mind at the moment. I am not a big bug guy, but my daughter loves bug stamps, so I am looking for more. I will expand this set as I can. Maybe the praying mantis is a bug???? See the first post. Meanwhile, it is a great time for bugs in Japan, with locusts/ cicadas buzzing about night and day, and spiders spinning their webs at night from our laundry poles to the neighbor's house.

日本語 hints
bug = 昆虫　 and more. Strictly speaking, an INSECT has 6 legs. BUGS might have 4,6, 8, even 100 legs.
praying mantis =　蟷螂
locust and cicada = 蝉 in easy English, though my Nebraska friend assures me that the locust and the cicada are distinct.

Japanese Flower Stamps (1)

This will probably be a long series of posts since there are so many postage stamps with flowers on them in Japan. I chose these two because they were among a large assortment of stamps I got recently from employees at company S. I have been involved with the company as an English teacher for close to 15 years but have not been active lately. I was visiting last week as a substitute teacher. On a lark, I emailed in the afternoon and told them about my collecting stamps with my daughter and asked for a few used stamps. That very evening, I was given several dozen stamps, to my surprise and delight.

日本語 hints
substitute teacher = 代理先生
on a lark = an idiom meaning by chance, without much planning, without expecting much. Similar to "on a whim".
dozen = 12

Chinese stamps

I love this pair of stamps from 1980 in China. The Cultural Revolution had ended a few years before and stamps like these could be seen. They also give a hint about the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, as they are in denominations of 4分 and 8 分, but recently almost nothing is priced so cheaply; everything is in 元. There might be a total of 4 stamps in the set - I am still searching.

日本語 hints
Cultural Revolution = 文化大革命
denomination =

martial arts stamps

Here are four martial arts- related stamps from my collection. I chose these for my first post because my real passion is practicing martial arts. One is a Japanese stamp showing a woman with a naginata - one of the Japanese budo which I practice. Another is from Hong Kong and shows an older man practicing tai ji quan. The other two show praying mantis - and I have some interest in tang lang quan (螳螂拳). I have never seen a stamp with someone practicing the praying mantis style of fighting!