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