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Happy February, friends!

I cannot believe that January passed so quickly! It’s as if time goes faster every single year. This Sunday is National Thank a Mail Carrier Day. It’s a bit of a mouthful, but for us, it's so important because we adore snail mail. Mail carriers are out in the rain, snow, heat, and wind six days out of the week year-round and without them, there is no way the paper mail service would be able to function.

In honor of this day, please thank your mail carrier! Even if you are at work or school while they come by your house, it's easy to do. Print and cut out one of our free, printable cards, add a quick message if you’d like, and pop it in your mailbox! The mail carrier will be so pleased to find out that you appreciate them regardless of how often you actually meet. Since the holiday is actually on a Sunday, you can put it in the day before or after so that they can still get the card.

You might also include a small treat like a cookie or candy bar with your card!

DOWNLOAD A PRINTABLE PDF NOW!

-Zee

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With regard to school lunches, I must say that I’m much less creative than April with regard to content (case in point: her kids' lunches). I certainly try to make them as healthy as possible but to appease my picky kids the lunches tend to have a lot of the same food in them from week to week. I'm the first one to admit they don’t score that high on variety.

So one way I try to step up—ummm— the excitement factor (I guess?) is by leaving a little note with their lunches every day. For my 7-year-old, we decided to focus on trivia this year. I’ll make up a question and she writes in her answer with the pen we leave in her lunch box. Sometimes she’ll pick a category, or sometimes I will, but she loves it and it gives me something to write other than “Have a nice day! We love you!”

Below are some recent trivia lunch notes, covering family, history, art, and sports and math in one (a combo!).

The notes tend to reference something I know she’s seen, heard, or learned. I’m not going to ask her something she has no chance of knowing, but I do like for her to search the recesses of her brain for the answer.

For my 5-year-old, she is happy with a standard “love note” as she calls it. I try to reference something we have going on that afternoon or tell her a joke. I learned she's not only picky about food; yesterday she declared her lunch note the “Most. Boring. Note. Ever.” Wow. Ouch. I guess it won’t always be a hit but I’m still determined to not miss a day!

Oh, and those adorable notepad sheets? You can get those here.

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Simply, sending love.

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3D cards are all the rage. At least they certainly were when I checked out the card collection at LOFT, an emporium of stationery, home goods, beauty supplies, and gifts. There were cards featuring classic Japanese themes like the ocean, morning glories, goldfish, fireflies, and fireworks. I especially like the details in the pop-up cards depicting summer scenes but my favorite card is the one with black and red goldfish merrily swimming in a fishbowl. It reminds me of all the festivals with kingyo sukui booths where my friends and I would compete to scoop the most goldfish and turtles with flimsy paper nets.

Speaking of festivals, there seem to be big summer events and fireworks every weekend over here in Tokyo. Just two weeks ago, I watched a dazzling array of colors light up the night sky while Tokyo Tower glowed blue and red. Festivals celebrating Obon, a Bhuddist observance to welcome home the spirits of ancestors, abound, filling public parks and narrow shopping streets with paper lanterns, food stalls, dance performers and taiko drummers. But the big highlight of my summers in Japan has always been visiting my grandparents’ house in Awaji, an island near Kobe (and the first island created, according to Japanese mythology), and dipping my feet in the ocean.

Sure, there's the heat, humidity and noisy cicadas, but you can't help but enjoy Japanese summers. Even though there is no actual holiday to commemorate, spreading the summer love and sending a fun card that will surprise and delight my friends and family is a good enough excuse for me.

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Sometimes even a so-called adult gets an undeniable impulse to buy an embarrassing amount of miniature Disney stationery.

Maybe it was because I needed a pick-me-up after I tried and failed to get a seat at the stationery café near Harajuku. I’ve been dying to check out the café, and to my disappointment, it was incredibly crowded (see image on the left). Clearly I wasn’t the only person who wanted to spend a gray afternoon perusing letter sets, notebooks and writing goods from around the world while enjoying a sandwich and coffee. Or maybe it was simply because I can't resist uniquely shaped greeting cards, especially when they are teeny tiny with vintage Disney designs.

The point is that when I got home, I looked over my Disney purchases and seriously wondered how I could possibly use these itty bitty cards. The Alice in Wonderland (shown with my pen to give you a sense of what I mean by mini) and Mickey Mouse book cards would make great gift tags on a present for a bibliophile who loves animation. The ‘Mini Mini’ book cards and Seven Dwarves ‘hug cards’ are so ridiculously small, they serve no discernible purpose besides being really cute. I’ll probably end up using them like confetti in a letter to my Disney-enthusiast best friend.

I see these little cards in almost every stationery store I come across in Tokyo and I’ve come to the conclusion that if you like Disney and things that are adorably small, Tokyo will not disappoint you. So come visit!

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