Did you know that envelopes in Japan are generally not gummed? It's a bit of a pain really, hunting around for a glue stick when you want to seal an envelope. But I recently discovered the reason why...
Christmas cards are pretty expensive in Japan (this is all related, hang in there...). You can buy some beautiful cards that are a gift in themselves, but you don't get packs of 10 or 20 cards at suitably reduced rates. I usually send about 40 cards, so I really don't want to pay three to five hundred yen per card! This year I thought I'd done well (sounding bad already isn't it?). When I was in the UK last year I bought a couple of packs of charity cards and brought them back to Japan with me.
This week I finally got around to a) finding them and b) writing them. And what do you think I discovered? Yeah, I'm sure you're all ahead of me here. After a hot, humid summer in the cupboard, all the envelopes had sealed themselves shut...
After steaming them all open over a saucepan of water, most have now been written. But if you're on my Christmas card list and you receive a last-season Oxfam card in a wrinkled envelope held shut with Sellotape, that's why.
Sorry.
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