I maybe an old fart, but I like the feel when I receive actual, tangible, paper cards in my post.
E-cards, they somewhat do not have the same feel to it; perhaps because I typically visit a site to view the animation and that would be it. On the other hand, finding out the home address is quite painful; there are so many ways to be connected with your friends, families, and acquaintances, but with so many different possible ways to communicate, you probably would have one or two channels among phone numbers (office or home or mobile), email addresses (for your phone and for PC in case of Japan), contact names in Flickr or other SNSs, and a post address. In my case, post address is something that comes the last.
Despite of many things going digital, Japanese seem to feel obliged to send new year postcards by January the 1st. I have seen in China, many people have already moved on to the digital world; the entire infrastructure for text messaging in China is built based on the number of SMS sent for the Chinese new year. In Japan, the same level of chaos does not happen, simply because conventional postcards, are still the primary way to greet one another. And I wonder, how are the Christmas card tradition are affected in Western countries?
Mixi, the biggest social networking service in Japan, has obviously recognized this joy and the pain. If you know the contact name in Mixi world, you can request Mixi to send the actual new year post card on your behalf. So no more hassles in the end of the year, asking people around for their home address.
The service will only start from this year, and we have to see how successful the service would become. I only have a very limited number of contacts in Mixi, but at least I have decided to send a few cards using this.
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