Cleaning Up Canada

Well, the long (and much awaited) winter holiday is upon us. Last week was the peak of the season for me, with a couple 13-hour working days, all day spent working on Dec. 23 (Emperor's Birthday), all day on Christmas Eve, even a little work on Christmas day itself - generally unthinkable in North America / Europe / etc.

Anyway, now it's time to catch up on a lot of unfinished business. It may have been a full year ago - I bought a few bags full of Canadian stamps (all unsoaked, ugh). I did a lot of work with them right away and have been trading off the extras over the past year -- but hundreds more have been waiting for some attention.

I finally got them all sorted and prepared the extras for trading, and feel great relief at getting caught up at last.

Other stamps news: my daughter and I made it to the stamp museum on their last business day of the year, just before closing time, quite nice. And today she surprised me by asking to work on stamps - it has been awhile since she showed much interest.

日本語 hints
13-hour working days: notice it is not 13-hourS working days, because the phrase "13-hour" is treated as a single word, modifying the noun. I worked 13 hours, but it was a 13-hour working day.

Emperor - note that 天皇 is Emperor (the person himself), not Imperial (related to the person)

two scary guys

Quite a deluge of stamps coming lately, and a drought of posts in this blog.

They continue to come in small batches from friends, acquaintances, co-workers past and present - once again, thank you all.

And sometimes they come in larger batches - two letters full of stamps awaiting my return from work tonight, one from the US (french stamps), and one from Australia.

I foresee much stamp work over the coming New Year's holidays....

日本語 hints:

deluge = a very large amount (usually a liquid)

drought = an extreme shortage (usually of water) 物の不足、欠乏、湿気不足

foresee = forecast, anticipate, 予感、予見、見越す

dinner and stamps

Earlier this week, my daughter and I went to a so-called "Family Restaurant" for dinner. She worked on her homework and I worked on stamps.

Actually, I worked on my Starbucks coffee mug. I had a few stamps in the old one. I took them out, rearranged, and added many more stamps.

I love the idea of a reusable / refillable coffee mug, but I think Starbucks should give more than a 20-yen discount when you bring it in.

two cats

I have never been a fan of Hello Kitty. But who couldn't like this stamp?

Recently I have been getting used postage stamps from more and more people - it seems the word is spreading, and more people are taking that extra moment to snip a stamp off an envelope and save it for me (big thanks to all of you!!).

Someday I will move back to the US from Japan, and I will really miss this feeling. Of course I want the stamps, but it is also good talk with people. And this can be a perfect conversation starter.

日本語 hints:

be a fan of = like (are you a fan of this blog?)

the word is spreading = more people know about something (i.e. that I am collection used postage stamps)

snip = cut off, 切り取る

from friends of a friend

There I was in the park, practicing praying mantis fist gong fu, when stamps appeared before me.

My friend had received small packages on behalf of another person in his "guest house" here in Tokyo and was good enough to rescue the stamps after giving her the contents.

After that, a praying mantis appeared before me. It was pretty wild. I was practicing a mantis form when I noticed something drop to the ground from the trees high above. Sure enough, it was a praying mantis. We communed a while, then I returned her to the tree trunk and she scurried away upward.

What a fine day of unexpected happenings.

日本語 hints:

praying mantis gong fu =　蟷螂拳

commune = 親しく語り合う

tree trunk = 木のから

scurry = あわてて走る

Those crazy Chinese comments...

Every blogger wants their blog to be read, I suppose, but we don't really know how many people are reading it. Or thinking about what is written. So comments are always welcome.

I don't get many comments on this blog (hint! hint!), so I get pretty excited when the Blogger Dashboard tells me there is a new comment waiting.

I got one a little while back. It was written in Chinese so I put my budding translation skills to the test. It didn't seem to relate directly to the post, but I was happy for some comment action.

Then I got another, and another - a couple dozen, all in Chinese, none apparently directly commenting on the posts in the blog. Hmmmm. I was suspicious of some kind of spam so I put them on the back burner. Later, I found that at least one of them had a link to an unsavory site. Also, truth be told, I found that my translation skills were not yet up to the task.

I have finally cornered a couple friends and asked for their help, and they all deserve big thanks. You'll soon be reading my very rough translations of this sudden flood of Chinese comments, with great thanks to those who offered their translations. In some cases, I will be modifying theirs slightly, rather than attempting my own.

Here is the bottom line: all comments are welcome, in whatever language, so long as they have some actual bearing on the posted material in the blog and are not solicitations to other websites / blogs.

and some bad news

Yes, from the same auction... someone started collecting in the 70s. Before they got smart in the 80s (buying sheets of unused stamps), they collected used stamps....and glued them into a notebook.

Probably nothing valuable so no great loss, but still disappointing. later, if I have time, I will see which ones - if any - can be soaked off, but I am not expecting great results.

More good news

The good news continues. From the same auction listed above -- piles and piles of used US postage stamps. Nothing valuable whatsoever - but all good for trading with people outside the US.

The downside, however, is that they are all still attached to corners of envelopes. That means hours and hours of soaking, peeling, drying, and flattening.

Anyway, the collection is growing...

Good news....

Yes, good news indeed.

At my suggestion, my father has been watching for used postage stamps at local auctions, where he often looks for antiques.

Usually, if stamps are advertised at an auction, the collectors come and the prices go high.

But once in a while, you get lucky. The stamps are not advertised, and no one is interested in them.

He paid a single dollar (maybe 80 Japanese yen at current exchange rates) for a box full of old stamps, including many sheets. Someone had collected used stamps for years and then began buying new sheets at the post office. But they didn't take good care of them, and some of the sheets are stuck together. However, many are in great shape. Hundreds of dollars of unused stamps at face value, probably a little higher in actual value.

I have never actively searched for valuable stamps, and have only sought used / cancelled stamps so far. But I welcome these additions, sheets and sheets of stamps, the stuff "real" collectors go after (though probably quite common, not so valuable).

I won't be expecting any more such lucky finds in the future, but I will be keeping my eyes open at auctions in the future.

long lost stamp album

It is FINALLY time for a vacation in the US! This one is long overdue. And it is already over halfway finished.

One high point was finding my long-lost stamp album from about 30 years ago, when I first started collecting used postage stamps. It is now hopelessly out-of-date, but it has great sentimental value to me, taking me back to long afternoons in my grandmother's basement with stamps spread out everywhere.

On our last trip to the US, two years ago, I had just gotten interested in stamps again. I dug out that old album, buried in a closet, and reveled in the hundreds of pages. But my memory was blurred - a friend of someone in the family might have wanted to start collecting stamps, and I might have said they could have my old album....

So for the past year, I have been waiting and hoping.

And yes, I found it again, buried under the mountains of books I have stored in the basement. I won't be bringing it back to Japan, but now I know where it is for certain and that it will be waiting for me.

Actually, there were many more stamp-related surprises this visit....stay tuned for upcoming posts.

日本語 hints:
* out-of-date = too old, unfashionable, 時代遅れ
* sentimental value = 感情価値
* dug out = 掘り出した
* revel in = ....を大いに楽しむ／喜ぶ

Stamps from Work

As a young boy, I collected stamps in Omaha, Nebraska. One of my parents' co-workers at Mutual of Omaha received many letters from overseas and was kind enough to save all of them for me. I had no idea what a great resource she was at the time.

I have no such easy source of large numbers of stamps from other countries just now, so I take what I can get. i was quite happy to receive two new ones for my collection from a co-worker last week. Both are probably common in their countries of origin (UK, Japan), but both were new stamps for me and are much appreciated.

These days, I suppose all overseas correspondence at Mutual of Omaha is conducted via email. I suppose that is good for paper reduction and the environment and all, but I think the concurrent loss of stamps is a tough blow to collectors.

日本語 hints

Mutual of Omaha - A large insurance company (保険会社) based in, well, Omaha Nebraska

a shell in the hand

Just doing some catching up...

Two days of TOEIC in Yokohama (just done). Three days of an email course in Yotsuya last week, and two days of a meetings course in Chiba. And so on, moving back in time. No time for stamps these days.

But tonight I have a slight breather and can make a small offering - a shell in my daughter's hand, actually from about a year ago.
日本語 hints

a breather = a small rest, or a break in the busy schedule. 一息つく？？

More to come...

trading postage stamps

No big happenings in my stamp world lately, just moving forward slowly.

I continue to slowly expand the scope of the collection. I am not ready to focus on a single topic or country yet.

Many people have already told me it is time (it is past time!) to narrow my focus, but for now I just want to gather stamps and trade stamps.

Any readers interested in trading, please leave a comment with your email ( I will not publish your email address on the blog, of course).

collect lots of stamps

The English alphabet has 26 characters. Learning those is tough for little kids – remember how you used to make the letter “s” backwards all the time, or how you had trouble with “b” and “d”?

Actually, there are 52 characters, because we have both capital letters (upper case) and lower case letters. Note: right now I am only talking about writing the letters in English, not spelling the words.

Learning to write characters in Japanese is about double that, because there are two sets of phonetic characters which represent sounds, hiragana and katakana, with 56 (?) characters each.

Oh, yeah, then there are the kanji characters which represent words or ideas. There are a few more of those, maybe 20,000 or so – though most people use only about 2000 kanji in everyday life.

Learning so many characters requires a lot of time and practice. So, from the first year of elementary school, Japanese children practice writing kanji every day in class and at home. And it is not enough just to write the characters – they must be written correctly, with each stroke made in a particular order and direction. All of that means lots of writing practice.

Here is a page from one of my daughter’s notebooks (she is in second grade, by the way). The character is 切, which can be read in two different ways (oh, yes, most kanji have multiple readings and meanings, complicating the situation even further, but that is a different topic).

One of them is “setsu” as in “shinsetsu” 親切, being nice to someone. Or, from her notebook, “Be nice to elderly people”. By the way, next week we have a national holiday for 敬老の日: Be nice to elderly people day.

Another reading is “ki” as in “kitte” 切手, or postage stamp. Or, as in her example, “Collect lots of stamps”.

日本語 hints:
-- characters = 文字
-- backward character =鏡文字
-- capital letters = 大文字 = upper case letters
-- lower case letters = 小文字
-- phonetic characters = 音声文字 (?)
-- kanji = Japanese characters (for English users). Chinese characters are hanzi, 汉字 and these are usually different from the kanji characters used in Japan.

Laos stamps

Recently a friend left Japan and moved to Laos, where he seems much more content. We have exchanged postcards and I have thus begun a small collection of recent stamps from Laos (more on those later).

The stamp above is not from my collection but was on display at the Tokyo Stamp Museum, part of an exhibition on animal stamps.

日本語 hints:
- content: has two meanings. In this sentence, it is an adjective meaning satisfied, 満足している. It can also be a noun, as in 内容、中身.

- exhibition: 展覧会、展示会, like a show or display

apologies and promises

Sorry for the long delays between posts recently, will be working hard to get back on track soon.

places you don't expect to find stamps

This week is dedicated to a visit to Tokyo (from Beijing) by my Chinese martial arts teacher, Liu Jing Ru.

You can read more about him and Chinese martial arts at my other blog.

Anyway, after today's practice (ba gua zhang), I noticed something in the lobby - a poster with enlarged pictures of stamps on it, all about dancing. It could have come straight from the stamp museum, but it was in fact an advertisement promoting a dance event here in Tokyo.

kirie, art made from cutting stamps

Yes, another kirie 切り絵 post....We visited the stamp museum again last weekend. Every third Sunday, they have a free session of kiri-e, so we tried it out and my daughter was surprisingly interested. Of course these are all stamps which are heavily over-stocked at the museum, hundreds or thousands of spares of each one.

catching up

Sorry for no posts lately....you've heard THAT before.

Work, work and work. But also some occasional good late-night work on my stamp collection.

One problem with the blog - I am getting a lot of comments, all in Chinese. And they often don't seem to match the content of the blog posts....then I noticed that one of them comes from an address with a link to a rather...unsavory....website in Taiwan.

To any legitimate posters of comments - please give me some time to verify the content before I put the comments on the blog to be seen by all.

Finally, while comments in Chinese are OK, how about some comments in English as well?

trading stamps

Last week I had an unexpected knock on the door.

Stamps from China! Praise to the mail carrier!

One of my long-term goals is to set up a network of stamp trading partners from various countries. Each of us has many duplicate stamps from the countries where we live. Why not swap those duplicates with each other?

I have lots of extras from Japan but almost no stamps from Country A. Someone living in Country A has lots of extras from their country, but few Japanese stamps. So it is perfect.

It helps to have a go-between, someone to act as intermediary. I am willing to take the risk of sending the first batch of stamps (what if the other person keeps the stamps but doesn’t send any back in return? Or what if they send stamps in poor condition?).

That is especially helpful when working across languages. I have had one very successful trade with an American. Gee, we both use English, no problem. And we had a good intermediary, someone who knew us both and introduced us.

Mr. H does not use English, but my Chinese is good enough at intermediate level (OK OK low intermediate…). Still, it was quite reassuring to have an introduction from someone who knows us both well and who is quite good in both languages.

I sent him a selection from Japan and other countries and he was quite satisfied. His selection for me was all Chinese stamps, just fine by me. Experienced collectors of Chiense postage stamps would not find much excitement in those Mr. H sent me, but I am just beginning to build my collection of Chinese stamps, so I was quite thrilled.

Likewise, the stamps which I sent him were not especially valuable or hard to find…for a person living in Japan. I think it is not so easy for him to get these stamps while living in his country.

I should mention a bit more about our intermediary, Mr. Wu, who was my tai ji quan instructor while I lived in China. Early every morning, we met and taught each other (English for him, tai ji quan for me). How could I have imagined at that time that I would, 10 years later, return to my childhood hobby and begin collecting postage stamps again?

日本語 hints:
unexpected = something unplanned, 思いがけない

duplicate = an extra copy (NOTE: this can be an adjective, noun, or verb)

swap = trade

go-between , intermediary = …の間の仲介

intermediate = 中級

reassuring = 安心させる

experienced = 経験を積んだ

thrilled = very happy about something. This is one of many –ED / _ING adjectives I have included. thrilled – thrilling; reassured – reassuring; sastisfied – satisfying, etc.

taijiquan = 太極拳, sometimes called “tai chi” in English

stamp art (2)

Here are a couple more pictures from the cut stamp art // kirie (切り絵) exhibition near my home. It is hard to see in the pictures from my camera, but the level of detail in the actual works is amazing.

Kirie can be made from any kind of paper – you cut strips of paper and arrange them in colorful patterns. When looked at from afar, they are quite beautiful. To me, they become even more beautiful when studied up-close. Then you can see how strips of individual stamps were placed together to make larger sections of color.


But I don’t think that kirie made from used postage stamps are very common. I hope to try it out with my daughter soon – they have a monthly session at the Tokyo Stamp Museum.

日本語 hints:

- exhibition = 展覧会、展示会
- from afar = from far away, from a distance
- up-close = well…up close. “close up” is frequently used (and mis-used!) in katakana English, but not “up-close”

Stamp Art

A couple months ago, I was wandering around the vendors' stalls at the Tokyo Stamp Museum when I noticed someone...it took me a while to place the face, then it hit me -- the security guard at a local community center.

I often go to martial arts practice at the community center and never got a word out of any of the security guards there. I suppose foreigners walking around with swords are not easy targets for conversation.

I must have passed by his post hundreds of times over the years, and not a word passed between us. And here he was, at the stamp museum. After a pause, I ventured a few words. Turns out he is a long-term stamp collector.

Since that time, we have exchanged words each time I visit the community center.

A couple weeks back, he tipped me off about an exhibition in the lobby: works of art made by cutting and arranging postage stamps (切り絵). I should post again later with more details, the name of the artist, and so on.

日本語hints
security guard = 警備員
martial arts = 武道、武術
tip someone off = tell them, give them information

Another stamp museum

Well sort of. I took my daughter to the “stamp show” at the Communications Museum near Tokyo Station. It was not what I expected, but the day turned out fairly well.

I had images of many dealers offering a wide variety of stamps and collecting equipment. Instead, there were a very small number of dealers with fairly limited inventory. But my daughter and I both dug deeply in the “10 stamps for 100 yen” basket and emerged with smiles.

These are the unwanted cast-offs from the dealer. Nothing valuable, to be sure, but much of interest to both my daughter and I. She stuck with her interests – large colorful stamps with animals and wildlife. Those, and old Soviet space glory stamps.

As for me, I scooped up a couple dozen oldies from countries which are under-represented in my collection, many countries from South America and Africa.

While at the museum we poked around all three floors but mostly we stuck with stamp stuff. For me, one of the most interesting exhibits was a collection of regional toys, specific to various prefectures in Japan, which have been featured on the annual New Years stamps (see photos).

We’ll probably go again next year, but with a better idea of what to expect, and more small change for the stamp basket.

Socialist Glory (2): Color

Every time I get a new pile of stamps, my daughter goes through them and gets first pick. I get the leftovers.

How does she choose? Bright colors are good, and things from nature: flowers, animals, more flowers. Anime characters. Maybe another flower (Japan issues so many flower stamps….) She grabs every stamp she likes and has built quite a backlog of unsorted stamps. The work of sorting them and putting them into albums is not as exciting as grabbing the stamps that grab her.

Recently I started trading with someone in the US and got a very nice batch of oldies, some 120+ years old. All old stamps, none colorful, none of interest to my daughter. My friend in Sweden just sent an assortment of recent Swedish stamps – all colorful, all nature-related. I am debating whether or not to show them to my daughter…

The stamp above is full of color. Not so interesting, really – oh boy, tractors in the fields! Workers unite! Yar! But it was issued in 1975 – China was still in the throes of the Cultural Revolution. It was not a colorful time in China – everyone wore drab Mao suits in subdued blues and greys.

And here is a stamp positively brimming over with vivid colors. I would like to know more about how such a colorful stamp was issued at that time in Chinese history.

日本語 hints:
- get first pick = to have the first choice, the initial selection
- leftovers = 残り物 – usually used for food (i.e. curry rice tonight, curry rice tomorrow morning, curry rice again the next night…)
- anime = anime. Like sushi and manga, this word is now used globally as part of English
- backlog = 未処理分, unfinished work, things left over to do
- something grabs me = it gets my attention (this stamp grabbed me); つかむ
- batch = a group, an assortment
- Cultural Revolution = 文化大革命
- drab = colorless, unexciting
- Mao suit = 人民服上下 (Mao = 毛沢東)
- subdued = 色等が和らげられた、地味な
- brimming over with xxx = completely full of; あふれている
- vivid = bright and splendid; 色があざやかな

二宮尊徳

I was walking around Tokyo after an all-day tai ji quan (太極拳) seminar and in the best of moods. I stumbled across a pair of statues, as seen in these pictures. So very different, this pair of famous figures from Japanese history.

西郷隆盛 Saigo Takamori, sometimes referred to as the “last true samurai”. He has had a sudden surge in popularity due to an NHK drama. I recently found a flyer for a mysteriously Saigo Takamori-themed shop in my mailbox.

Recently, I use him and 虻 chan in juxtaposition when teaching about non-verbal communication. His famous statue in Ueno Park never moves, has no facial expression, no hand gestures, etc. (= common communication style among my first-time students). Then there is Abu-Chan, one half of the xxx duo. She is a model of ample use of facial expression, hand gestures, and so on. So I use those two as opposite ends of a continuum.

二宮尊徳 Ninomiya Sontoku – his statues are often found in front of Japanese elementary schools – always reading a book while walking with a load of wood. = hard worker and earnest student. I read once that, while in abject poverty, he collected the grains of rice forgotten or discarded by others, and planted them on tiny plots of abandoned land. From those humble beginnings he rose to become a much admired and respected agricultural leader.

What does all this have to do with stamps? I was thinking about my current approach to collecting. I am gathering the discarded leftovers of others. I thrill to find a marked-down album with a few spare pages that a stamp dealer no longer needs. I thrill even more when walking home after purchasing a box with thousands of stamps from around the world for a very low price.

For the dealers, these are just unneeded duplicates with little or no value. But to me, they are the beginning of a new collection of stamps and have great satisfaction and value.

I wouldn’t begin to compare myself to Ninomiya Sontoku and his accomplishments, but the minor parallel - collecting the unwanted leftovers from someone else and creating something with them – struck me.

日本語 hints
stumble across = find unexpectedly
a surge in popularity = suddenly becoming much more popular
flyer = ちらし
juxtaposition = putting two opposites together, 並列
facial expression = 表情
continuum = spectrum, range, or 連続体 (but this is for math…)
statue = 象、彫像, etc.
poverty = having no money, 貧乏、貧困 (abject = extreme)
leftover = 残り物
purchase = buy
discarded = thrown away, not needed
duplicate = extra (unwanted) copy of something (this is adjective or 形容詞. This word can also be a verb with the same spelling but different pronunciation.

restraint

Why do you collect stamps? Every stamp collector hears this question again and again. As for me, I like gathering things, the thrill of finding and collecting. And the more sober joy of organizing.

Lately I have had to develop a new talent and to find joy in it: restraint. That is, holding back or saying no.

Many collectors are specialized, focusing or narrowing their range. Not me. I am still content with simply gathering large numbers of stamps from every country, every time period.

Just gathering, getting, collecting, those things provide my reward.

Now I have found places where I can cheaply buy very large numbers of used stamps which I don’t have yet. Every dealer has bags of leftovers and duplicates. They want to do some house cleaning. I want some quick acquisitions. I have the spare time to soak the stamps off the envelopes. That keeps my costs down and my interest high.

But once it starts, it seems there is no end. Just one more bag, all these stamps from ABC country. Oh, I will never find that pair from XYZ again! I must buy it now! and so on…

I was sorely tempted the other day by a stack of old albums half-filled with remainders and duplicates from many countries which are – for my collection just now – quite obscure. The selling price was good enough just for the albums, so it was almost like the stamps were free. But the albums were a different size from the others I have.

And more importantly I had to learn to say no. There will always be more leftovers, more duplicates. If too many stamps come too easily, much of the joy of collecting is gone. That’s why the (otherwise dull and dreary) work of soaking the stamps off the envelopes appeals to me.

I was so close….teetering on the brink…but I had to be firm and resolute. Despite the generous reduction in price offered by the dealer, I had to say no. Standing there, seeing the stamps and albums in front of me, I still wanted them badly. But as I walked away, I felt a sense of … not quite happiness, but relief.

Self-control. Restraint. Waiting. These are also valuable parts of the collecting experience.

stamp girl

my daughter hard at work on her collection....

half a century and more

Some months back, my stamp collection got a boost from an unexpected donation by one of my students.

This collection had belonged to someone living not far from me at all. He traveled about SE Asia for his work and collected stamps here and there in addition to the Japanese stamps he gathered.

1958. Well before I was born. Over half a century ago, like a time capsule buried by one person, waiting to be opened by another. He has passed away. I wonder if he ever imagined a non-Japanese would be sorting through his stamps!

Unfortunately the album itself was no longer usable, though the stamps it contained were a windfall.

Thank you and thank you again.

日本語hints
get a boost = receive more of something
unexpected = 思いがけない
century = 100 years (centimeter, 100 cents = one dollar, centipede = ムカデ, etc.)
time capsule = well.... タイムカプセル
windfall = 思いがけず手に入った (two times for omoigakenai....)

Canada stamps (1)

Last visit to the stamp museum in Tokyo, I scored a nice collection of common Canadian stamps in an album – just the overstock from one of the dealers. None of the stamps were particularly special, but I had very few stamps from Canada and wanted to boost my collection a bit.

Besides, the price was right and the album and stamps came together. I moved the stamps to one of my albums and gave the just-purchased album to my daughter for her collection.

Until now, she has just had a couple pages in one of my albums, but now she has her own album. This is very important to a six-year-old!

There were basically two types of stamps – long series of profiles, and outdoors / nature / wildlife. You can guess which ones my daughter wanted for her collection.

Anyway, I am not a huge Olympics fan, but congratulations to Canada for hosting a successful Winter Olympics.

日本語 hints:
scored = got, bought, purchased – it is a bit informal

overstock = extra copies or duplicates they don’t need, 供給過剰

boost = add to, improve -- also a bit informal

the price was right = in this case it means the price was low, it was a good deal

just- Notice that we can put “just-“ in front of almost any verb, together with a dash

you can guess = you probably know

Olympics – Notice that the word is usually plural (複数) by itself, but is often singular (単数) when used together with another word: Olympic games, Olympic sport, etc. vs. the Olympics

I want to trade for more Chinese stamps

New Year Stamps

I spent much of my New Year’s holiday working on stamps – soaking thousands of stamps off envelopes, and drying them, and flattening them. I haven’t yet put them into my album as I am trying to reorganize and I don’t want to move them all again in the future.

In the beginning, I just put them in an album in ascending order from 1 yen to 1000 yen. But now, having bought a catalog of all Japanese stamps ever issued, I see that I am in way over my head. I will likely follow its system: grouping by themes such as furusato, commemoratives, and so on. Then, it arranges chronologically within each theme. Fine enough, but now I have to move and shuffle about three billion stamps.

It was so simple when I was young. Maybe 30 years back, I had a giant Harris album with little Xeroxed pictures of every stamp in the world (or so it seemed). Find the country, find the picture, put a hinge on the stamp and stick it on the page. So neat and orderly!

So far I have four albums with no end in sight (and all those thousands I bought just before the new year…). I suppose that is part of the joy of it all – imposing order upon chaos. Strange connection, but it seems that is what my latest favorite TV show, Deadwood, was all about – the director was interested in how chaos is transformed into civilization. (Deadwood was one of the last Wild West towns in the US and had a brief period of near-anarchy before it was formally brought into the US.

Well, heavy themes aside, you can find in the picture my themes over the New Year holiday: postage stamp work (drying on the plates), good beer, and daidai citrus fruit to mix with shochu alcohol. Hmmm, it is getting late at night and cold in my room. Maybe it is time to heat some water and shochu….

日本語 hints:
ascending order – moving up from smaller to bigger = 昇順

in way over my head – the project is much too difficult (お手上げ！)

chronologically – in order by year = 時系列順

Xerox -- the name of a photocopier company. The word is now used as noun AND verb in English (similar to new internet-related verbs like ぐぐる or うぃきる?)

hinge – in this context, a small item which is used to stick the stamp into an album without damaging the stamp

imposing order upon chaos – tough one. “impose” is something like 果たす or 押し付ける. Chaos = 無秩序 or 混乱状態. Order = something like 秩序. So this phrase means to change chaos into an orderly situation.

anarchy – 無政府

焼酎 – This is best left as “shochu” in English, maybe together with “Japanese distilled spirits” to stress that the alcohol content is higher than the more-commonly known お酒 or sake. Using both E and J together is often best for unique Japanese foods and drinks.