This isn't exactly topical, but...

I mentioned a while back how important New Year's is to the Japanese. Well, one neat tradition that I meant to write about but haven't written about until now is the sending of "nengajo," or New Year's postcards. (I know that "nen" means "year" but I haven't bothered to ask what "gajo" refers to.)

I guess you could say nengajo are the Japanese equivalent of Christmas cards. Except sending nengajo is far more a part of Japanese culture than sending Christmas cards is a part of American culture, for instance.

You can buy nengajo in many places, such as department stores, convenience stores, home improvement stores, and the post office, starting sometime in November, from what I remember.

Most nengajo, especially those that you buy at the post office, are of the "pre-paid" variety. That is, there is an image of a stamp already on the card. Those cost about 80-100 yen each (50 yen for the stamp and 30-50 yen for the card). You can also find plenty of postcards without the stamp, but most people obviously prefer the "pre-paid" type, since they save you a trip to the post office (or at least a wait in line for stamps).

Lots of companies also give people the option of personalizing their postcards, usually with family pictures. Those tend to be higher quality cards, so I imagine they must cost at least another 20 or 30 yen each. Considering that it's not unusual for families to mail about 100 or more cards, sending nengajo can be an expensive tradition.

In any case, for weeks and weeks, the post office collects all of the cards that people mail and then delivers (or at least tries to deliver) all of them on New Year's Day! How wacky is that? From what I understand, the post office hires thousands of college students to help deliver the mountains of cards.

I probably received about as many cards as I mailed (12 or so), but I didn't mail a card to everyone who mailed one to me, and I didn't receive a card from everyone to whom I mailed one. As far as I'm concerned, that's fine. But some Japanese apparently feel the need to even things out.

So days and even weeks(!) after New Year's, you'll find people frantically writing postcards, trying to make sure that everyone who sent them a card also gets one in return.

One guy I talked to told me a funny story about the reciprocity deal:

He decided this was the year to cross one of his "friends" off his nengajo list, since they hadn't seen or talked to each other in years. So he didn't send him a card. But sure enough, he got one from the guy. So he decided he had no choice but to write back. In the end, I guess he just didn't have the heart to leave the guy hanging, even though that is what he would have preferred to do.

Another cool thing about the postcards is that most of them have a six-digit number on the bottom right, along with a series number on the bottom left. The six-digit number is a lottery number. To win a "big" prize, such as a TV, an oven, or an iPod, you have to match the entire number on your postcard with the winning number(s).

But there are also "lesser" prizes, such as pasta sauce, chestnuts, or canned soup. To win those, you have to match the last four digits.

And to win (the) "el cheapo" prize, which this year was a set of two stamps totaling 130 yen, all you have to do is match the last two digits. Guess what I won?

Heck, I'm just glad I won something! I guess no one I sent a card to won anything "big," because I imagine I would have heard about it. Too bad the bigger prizes aren't money. That way, you could make a deal with everyone you send a card to: "If you win, I get half." But how do you share a TV?