New Years Postcard Lottery

New Years is Japan’s biggest holiday.  The holiday has many traditions in Japan.
One of the traditions is sending 年賀状 (New Years postcards).

One the back of Japanese New Years postcards, in the lower right-hand corner, is a six-digit number.
Every year in late January, the Japan Post Office has a New Years Postcard Lottery.

Yesterday was this years drawing.

The winning numbers for the 2010 年賀状 (New Years Postcard) lottery:

★ First Place (TV, computer, travel, digital camera or an office set)
– 975424

★ Second Place (Wii, digital camera, DVD player, TV)
– 259668,
– 446722, or
– 630838

★ Third Place (brand name merchandise)
– any number with the last four digits as 0977

★ Fourth Place (postage stamps)
– any number with the last two digits as either 00 or 52

★ “C” Prize (JTB ¥5,000 gift certificate)
– any number with the last five digits as 27520

There is also a Summer postcard lottery in Japan.
And I wrote a post about the New Years Postcard Lottery last year.

Did you get 年賀状 (Japanese New Years postcards) this year?
Do any of you cards have a winning lottery number?
I have three winning cards…all for postage stamps.

切手

I’m not a 切手収集家 (stamp collector) but sometimes the post office offers 切手 (postage stamps) that I can’t refuse…so I have a few collectors’ sheets of stamps from the Japan Post Office.

One of them is the 「スター・ウォーズ切手」 (“Star Wars” stamps). These stamps came in a nice, hard-cover protective binder illustrated with Star Wars artwork.

Japanese "Star Wars" stamps

And here is the protective binder:

Another series of stamps that the post office in Japan offered a few years ago was what they called 「科学技術とアニメ・ヒーロー・ヒロインシリーズ」 (“Science & Technology and Anime Heros & Heroines Series“)…which included such anime as 「鉄腕アトム」 (“Astro Boy“) and 「名探偵コナン」 (“Detective Conan“)…but the one I got was Series Four: 「科学忍者隊ガッチャマン」 (“Science Ninjas: Gacchaman” (known overseas as: “Battle Of The Planets“)).

I used to watch this cartoon in America when I was a kid.