Thursday, January 20, 2011

Nanba-kun (ナンバ君、"Mr. Number")

Today I learned something new.

I was doing some research on Japanese passports online and I came across this blog called ShiShi Girl.

She talks about sending postcards using Post Crossing, which is a pretty cool website that connects you with other people who like to send and receive postcards.
One of the professors here at my school uses this site in one of her classes and she has all her students send postcards all over the world. She has them use her return address here at our university to ensure some privacy for the students. It's a really good idea and she's gotten back some really wonderful postcards.

Anyway - while one her site I was reading about kamon, a type of family crest symbol used in Japan, one of which appears on the cover of the Japanese passport.
After that I clicked around and learned about this character I didn't know about:

Do you see a strange little face symbol? That's the Japanese post's Nanba-kun (ナンバ君、 "Mr. Number" ) character, essentially the J-version of Mr. Zip.
Who's Mr. Zip you ask?
Go here to find out. :)

Ahh the wonders of Google and Wikipedia. How did we survive 10 years ago without them?? :D

-Jason

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