Postcards from Japan - Where to find them and how to send them

My family sends cards for every holiday, and postcards from every new travel destination. Even though I’ve lived out of the US for more than ten years, they still send me cards and care enough to pay attention to how long it takes for delivery. Now that I live in Thailand, they mail cards one month in advance to guarantee it’s on-time arrival leaving me happy for days.

It’s something special we do as a family to stay connected. So when I travel I always make sure to find a way to send a postcard. I can’t count how many times they didn’t receive them.

I’ve learned a lot of lessons; the most crucial being I must buy and stick the stamp myself and physically put the postcard in the postbox for it to arrive.

Physically adding the stamps also ensures one will be on the postcard. My family loves stamps from around the world, and never let me forget the time I sent postcards from Korea with an electronic stamp. Haha.

Sending postcards to my family is a priority when I travel. I kept looking for postcards in Tokyo. I looked and looked and looked, but never found any. It was my last day and I was starting to stress, so I asked people where I could find postcards. Unanimously they responded at the post office.

BUT of course it was a holiday, and they were all closed!

A kind lady made a few phone calls and confirmed Tokyo Central Post Office was open, so I headed there as quickly as I could.

Luckily I found it and was delighted with the vast selection of postcards. I carefully selected ones I knew they would love, wrote them, stamped them, and put them in the postbox myself.

They arrived a few weeks later! Mission accomplished!

Post offices in Tokyo are generally open from 9am-5pm, Monday thru Friday. Tokyo Central Post Office is open 7 days a week, until 9pm on weekdays and 7pm on weekends.