Japan II

Postcard of Tokyo's Haneda Airport with Mount Fuji in the background. Tokyo has two airports; Haneda, Tokyo's original airport a short train-ride from the city centre, and Narita, built two hours away in the middle of nowhere when Haneda became too crowded after the growth of air travel in the 1970s. When I lived in Japan, Haneda was the domestic airport and Narita the international one; not a terribly convenient situation if you needed to transfer from one to the other. A new runway and terminal building were added to Haneda in 2010 and international services returned. I flew home to Singapore through Haneda last Christmas and preferred it immensely to somewhat dreary and utilitarian Narita airport. I look forward to using it again in the future.

Stamp from 1997 definitive series, still going strong! The series features Japanese fauna, and pictured here is the Japanese tit, Parus minor, a common songbird found throughout Japan and East Asia.

Japan

A blast from the past! I found this postcard inside a book a started rereading. It was the last postcard I sent from Japan before moving away. If you look closely, you can even make out the "Terminal 2 Narita Airport" cancellation mark on the stamp. It was quite an emotional move, but of course I found the wherewithal to send a postcard to Mum. :-)

A really quite lovely stamp issued in a series for the 1999 International Letter Writing Week featuring a classical Japanese print of 菊に虻 (Horsefly at Chrysanthemums) from the 1700s.