Happy New Year

Pooches packed into a car posting their airmail letter and wishing you all A Happy New Year.   This pre-stamped card was sent to me last year and is one of Japan's New Year lottery cards (two numbers on the back) where you can win trips, electrical goods and of course sheets of stamps. They do the same with New Year stamps.  There are an enormous number of letters and cards sent at this time of year.   

At the corner of 100 Acre Wood a little bear is cogitating  "I wonder what Piglet is doing thought Pooh I wish I was there doing it too"

Hurray, Pooh Bear's wish has come true and he and Piglet having fun with their dragon kite on this postcard stamp.  To make up the postage Noriko also attached

one of the Flower definitives showing an Asiatic Honey Bee (Apis cerana) which likes to nest in small spaces such as tree trunks. It produces small honey yields  but their beeswax is used in natural medicine to treat and heal wounds. Winnie-the-Pooh perhaps would be more interested in eating honey than applying it...

“Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.” 

Japan issued their first New Year Greetings  stamp in 1935 featuring Mount Fuji and the Imperial Chrysanthemum Seal at the top, I think the other flowers are cherry blossom.  They issued New Year stamps again in 1936 but that was the end of that until 1948 and then another gap until 1951 since when they have issued a stamp every year, nowadays usually more than one  featuring the year's animal from the Lunar Calendar.

such as this from 2012 which I found on the net with an example of the lottery tab attached.

Wishing you all A Happy New Year

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps