Neglect continues...80 work weeks have changed into 80-hour work weeks with a different job alignment but still so little time. Here are two pictures from a month or two back -- in one day, I discovered both of these among my daughter's things from school.

Japanese New Years' stamps

Yet another type of series for collectors - these are usually used only on special "nengajou", kind of postcards that people send out with new years' greetings on them.

sarawak stamps

Where is Sarawak? I have never been there, but it has come to me.

In the last post, I lamented about a collector who had pasted her stamps onto the pages of a spiral notebook, rendering over half of them unretrievable. I am still working on those, nearing the end at last. That's a problem: once I start, I can't finish.

So I have duly soaked, peeled, dried, and pressed hundreds of US stamps from the 1950s to 1970s. Sorting them by denomination this morning, I came across one from Sarawak. This was a new one for me but quick internet searching filled me in. What a time / place that must have been. You could go and resolve a dispute between the government and the governed and be awarded a huge chunk of land that stayed in your family for three generations -- except for four years of Japanese occupation during the war. I don't know the natives' perspective on it all, but the family claims to have respected the native traditions in the area, apart from headhunting, which was banned.

Changing the Past

Do you ever wish you could change the past? Like take back a careless word spoken, or one rash decision that led to a bad outcome? I think we all know that feeling.

Do you ever wish you could change or take back the words or actions of others?? I think we all know this feeling, too.

I made a very fortunate purchase at an auction some time ago. Not a stamp auction, but a home auction, selling off everything inside a house. Near the end of many auctions, after the early boxes and the big-money items, there are usually boxes of leftovers that go really cheap. Sometimes they just start throwing boxes together for a dollar, just to finish the sale.

Actually it was my father, not me. He had noticed some stamps in a box – just piles of cancelled stuff, nothing apparently valuable, just thrown in a box with no organization. Under my earlier instructions, he made a low bid for it and got it. Once home, the treasures were revealed – many complete sheets of stamps, perfect for the collection. There were also many plate blocks but, sadly, they had been stored together in a stacked position and were stuck together.

Some were OK. On someone’s advice, I put the others in the freezer and was later able to salvage a few more without damage. The rest remain in the freezer. Indeed, I wish I could have had that former collector separate each sheet and plate block with plastic wrap, in plasticine, anything.

But I felt the above feeling, that wish that I could undo certain choices of others, more keenly with one strange notebook. Some young woman in small-town Nebraska had taken to collecting stamps and she had a good range of US and world from the 1950s. Unfortunately, she glued or pasted most of them on the pages of a spiral notebook. That’s what I really wish I could change.

I took out a random page and tried to soak them off. Absolutely no luck. I was disappointed but tried again a couple days later. Success – or partial success. Maybe she used a different type of glue or paste. Anyway, many of them fell off the page with a light shake. Most of the rest I could easily soak off, and I lost a few to thinning.

I am doing a page or two a day right now. So far, they have all been in the middle of the two above patterns – none fall off easily, most come off with soaking but have some glue / paste left on the back of the stamp. Maybe not even worth my effort, but I don’t like to quit things once I have started.

If I had a time machine, I would go back and talk to that young woman, praise her enthusiasm for collecting, but ask her to store them better.

She could never imagine that I would end up with her stamps. I wonder who will end up with mine??

movies

Did a little stamp trading on Saturday, learned a lot about how to better organize my collection. Heard one other thing which perplexed me: my stamp friend watches movies while he works on his collection. My immediate reaction was that I cannot do that - when I watch a movie, I want to give it my full attention. And when I work on stamps, I give them my full attention.

That night, I sat down in the living room to do some long-neglected work on my collection. As luck would have it, my family started watching a movie (yes, I should have done it in my room). Forrest Gump. It had been a long while since I had seen it and I found myself watching portions of it, then doing stamps, and so on, back and forth.

Might have to try that again.

... and hello USA

Happy New Year from Kansas. We shipped almost 130 boxes by sea and landed safely in Kansas. I have already gone to a meeting of the local stamp club and it was quite nice.

More importantly I set up my first trade - a lot of my Japanese duplicate stamps for Chinese and Taiwanese stamps. Strange but good setting, an old family style bakery four times as big as any donut shop in Japan. We two stamp traders were the only customers until the local yakkers came in, eyeing the stamp action from afar as they drank coffee and talked about the weather and football.

Anyway, my stamp world has expanded rapidly and it looks like much more to come.

Good-bye Japan...

...and hello USofA. Yes, we finally made it, and are now spending our first night in an apartment here in Kansas (one state below my home of Nebraska).

More notes once things have settled down a bit. I made it over with most of my stamp albums but had to leave one in Japan at the last minute, will bring it over next time I am in Japan.

leaving Japan

Less than two weeks left in Japan, and every day seems to get shorter (and the list of things to do gets longer!).

We sent 115 boxes by surface mail out of Yokohama but should have sent more. We are now sending the few remaining boxes via Japan Post. I saw these recent stamp releases at the local post office. I am looking forward to finding collectors in the US who want Japanese stamps.

Don't forget 節水 !!

I love this stamp, from a while back in Taiwan, encouraging people to reduce both water and electric usage. Save our natural resources!

Here in Japan, because of the threat of power blackouts from Tokyo's over-reliance on the nuclear plant which was damaged by a tsunami which followed the March 11 earthquake, everyone has become quite conscious about saving electricity.

That is great and I am happy to see so many examples in everyday life. But I think that feeling will fade soon. It is always good to conserve electricity, not just due to a temporary threat of black-out. And the same with water.

Shinjuku stamp center

it was so close all these years and I only just discovered it. I stumbled upon a small stamp shop in Nakano Broadway amid all the manga and anime and characters and such. Not much there for me, but the attendant was quite nice and drew me a map to Shinjuku Stamp Center.

Made it there within a week. Several small dealers all gathered in one space, too much to take in on my short visit. But I found the sold-by-weight Japanese commemoratives featured in the last post.....

stamps by weight

I love this idea -- buying postage stamps in bulk by weight, rather than by number. Nothing valuable in the bag, but hundreds and hundreds of commemoratives, good for trading with people from other countries. The only problem, of course, is time, the time needed to soak the stamps off the paper / envelopes.

I just finished the last 100 or so in the bag, so I'll be heading to 新宿切手センター again before long.

trading postage stamps (2)

I have weekly English lessons with a wonderful Japanese grandmother. She lives near one of the US military bases in town and took lessons for years from the wives of US military men. We have studied together about two years.

About a year ago, the subject of collecting used postage stamps came up. It turns out her husband (like many Japanese men of his generation) was an amateur collector years back. She told her grandson about my collection and he seemed interested. So I started giving her stamps to give to them each lesson. It is just my overstock, extra copies, and I give two of each stamp -- that way grandfather and grandson won't argue over who gets each stamp.

A little while back, the grandson (at grandmother's urging, no doubt) made a small gift for me -- he drew this on a hand-held fan and I quite liked it. For English-language readers, it basically says "thanks for the stamps. I especially like stamps with animals on them".

Unfortunately, most of my extras are boring pictures (for kids): boring dead people, boring buildings. But I am trying to slip in an animal or two among the buildings and portraits.

viva la france!

Had meant to post this one on or near July 14 for Bastille Day but it slipped through the cracks (work work work).

I received a nice assortment of older French stamps from an American with whom I trade stamps. I have a strange feeling all the time, as I have many older stamps in my collection from when I was a child, and that collection is buried in my father's basement in the US. Now I am getting a second collection going, all over here in Japan. I am waiting for the day when I can finally unite these two collections.

日本語 hints:

slip through the cracks = fall by the wayside - something I thought about doing but never accomplished

strange hobbies

The number of martial artists who collect postage stamps is surely quite small. I am one of those few. It was a childhood hobby (stamp collecting) which I resurrected about three decades later when my daughter seemed interested.

Oh, she was quite interested....for a few months. She still likes to sift through the new arrivals and pick out the best ones, but that is as far as it goes. So her interest has faded, but I am continuing.

Japanese hints (sorry, no kanji -- my japanese character input seems to have temporarily quit.....)

martial artist = budoka, (budo-baka may be more accurate), bujutsuka

resurrected = brought back to life or, more loosely, started again

decade = 10 years

sift through = sort through, pick and choose from among a large group

62 yen stamps

Had a sudden deluge of 62-yen stamps, a short-lived series in Japanese stamp history. As usual, nothing rare, but certainly some of them were uncommon for amateur collectors like me.

Anybody who wants to do some stamp trading, please get in touch with me!!

little time for stamps

Not much has changed since last post. Tokyo life is about the same after the earthquake and tsunami - supplies of various goods go up and down but it is generally easier to find almost everything. The focus is still on areas that are having real hardship -- as it should be.

Meanwhile I set aside a few minutes here and there to work on the stamps. But right now, there are too many other pressing projects.

There is no special meaning to the bird stamps. Nor did I set out to start a bird-based collection. These are just a group I put together by chance.

日本語 hints:
easy vocabulary this time, the only hard word might be "pressing"
pressing - in this context, the meaning is "very important, something I need to do right now"

no time for stamps

These are hard days with no time for stamps. I am finding a couple here and there but right now, everyone is focused on returning to normal lives after the earthquake / tsunami / radiation.

We have it easy in Tokyo where the damage was light. We only have to deal with inconvenience here, trying to buy things for everyday life.

Meanwhile, I will offer a few vocabulary words related to earthquakes:

日本語 hints:

放射能 radiation, radioactivity
震源地 epicenter
余震 aftershock

earthquake

Of course everyone knows about the terrible earthquake that struck Japan last week, and the damage from the tsunami which followed. And now we are all worried about nuclear radiation or fallout.

Last Sunday we met some friends and I got a few new stamps, birds from Hong Kong, and they have become a kind of symbol of hope for me. Let's all hope the situation improves soon and that more people can be saved.

日本語 hints
an earthquake strikes - this is the usual collocation, noun + verb
震源地　= epicenter
余震　　= aftershock

no time, no time!!

so many stamps calling out for my attention, but no time to give them the attention they deserve. Why didn't I spend more time with my collection when I was much younger, and had so much more time?

This picture is from a couple months back. I was sorting out duplicates, searching for things to send out to people in trade. If you know anyone who might like to trade used postage stamps with me, help us get in touch!

日本語 hints:
duplicates = extra copies