New Year Postcards (2006-01-01)
On New Year's Day, most stores will be closed. People who are working today are usually those in the public service such as police, train staff or medical personnel. But a very special group of people will also be busy working their butts off today. They are your friendly postal workers.
Postmen (they are always men as far as I know) take it very serious
today to deliver New Year postcards. In the morning bright and
early before they begin their delivery, they will exchange greetings
and bows with their superior, and then head off doing their job.
Japanese people send out special postcards to family and friends
twice a year, and the New Year ones are particularly significant.
The cards carry the proper greetings from the senders and also a
summary of events which has happened to them in the past year.
These postcards are an integral part of the New Year tradition and
therefore it is important for them to arrive not on the 2nd, the 3rd,
the 4th or the day post offices reopen for business, but right on New
Year's Day. So postal workers throughout Japan have to work today
so the rest of the country can receive the all important postcards on
time.
Such dedication to tradition and work is admirable, but not
surprising. Japanese people's work ethics are among the highest
in the world.
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