Nengajo 年賀状

Four more days and 2014 will come. With the advancement of technology, no more hand written greeting cards, and no more SMS greetings. However, now we can get tonnes of greetings from friends in Facebook, Line, WeChat, Whatsapp and so on. Come to think of it, we actually save a lot of money on cards and SMS, it's not so bad. Although I don't mind the digital greetings, it's still quite heatwarming to receive greeting cards by mail!

In Japan, almost everybody still send out nengajo 年賀状 (greeting cards) to family members, friends and acquaintances every new year. Interestingly, no matter how early one sends out the nengajo, the recipient will only receive the greeting card on 1st of January. JP post will employ many temporary workers to handle all those nengajo. However, the cut off date is 25th December if one wants the recipient to receive the nengajo on 1st January. If one sends out the nengajo after Christmas, there will be no guarantee that the recipients will get the nengajo on the 1st day of the year.

Nengajo is big business in Japan, other than JP Post, many supermarket chains offered the nengajo printing services, like Aeon, Daie, Parco, etc. To make it more convenient, most have apps for designing nengajo for iPhone and Android. When I was in Japan, I didn't make customized nengajo, I just bought nengajo directly from convenience store and send to selected colleagues, boss included of course!

Well, below photos show the customized nengajo I received from my colleagues in 2013.

traditional type nengajo

nengajo with photos of family members

nengajo with this year zodiac, snake. 2014 will be horse year.

simple nengajo with a self-portrait

Some will further personalized the nengajo with stickers, me too! I bought cute stickers from Daiso and stuck it on the nengajo I sent to female colleagues.

Plain nengajo with a Hello Kitty sticker

a cartoonified kanji of spring "春" 

The numbers on the edge of the backside of nengajo (issued by JP Post) is a kind of lottery number. The prizes are electrical items normally. After the announcement, the winners have to claim for it in a fixed duration, I never bothered to check though, I am not lucky in the lucky draw department!

backside of nengajo