Happiness in a mailbox

Did you write a letter recently? I mean really “write”, not “type”. I got a letter from my old Japanese friend a couple of days ago. I saw an unusual colour of envelope in our mailbox - they are usually white and not even called letters, but bills! When I saw that, I got a bit excited, but Nico and I were on the way to Paul’s parents’ place so I put it under the pram. Some people just rip it open to read, but I don’t usually do that especially for these kinds of letters… (if it’s bill, I do.) I patiently waited until we came home and opened this letter with scissors.

this made me really happy!

 Two sheets of gingko leave shaped paper were filled with hand written words. It's autumn time over there in Japan. She moved to a countryside from Chiba (next of Tokyo) a month ago with her husband's job. It seems difficult to find friends there but instead she's enjoying writing letters to her friends when she has time.

She asked me a couple of questions, so I felt like emailing her to answer those questions quickly, but I thought it's more natural to write her back by snail mail so I did. I used to have good collection of letter sets (I had some pen pals in Japan and overseas), but now all I have are envelopes I bought in Japan almost 4 years ago.

the envelope I bought in Nara almost 4 years ago

 I used "kaishi" for the letter. Kaishi is paper to use for Japanese tea ceremony. They put sweets on this paper ( it's a bit like a serviette) and there are so many lovely designs. I sometimes get kaishi as a gift from my Japanese friends, but don't often get to use them here, so I thought this was a good use;) but I feel bad that I couldn't pick any seasonal letter paper for her. Japanese people really appreciate that sort of attention to detail.

This is the kaishi I used

 I went to the post office and sent it yesterday. It will take 4-5 business days until my friend gets my letter and reads all the replies to her questions. Thinking about my letter sitting in her mailbox and making her excited about opening it just makes me happy. I think I'm enjoying this new-old system. Maybe I need to have new collection of letter sets again;-)

Do you write letters? Are you interested in getting some nice collections of letter sets? If you are, probably I can think about getting those for my shop :)

 

with love,

 

Allie