Middle East & Africa, Editor’s Pick, Weird, Odd & Just Plain Fun

Sushi, sumo wrestling, anime, Olympics 2020? Yes, these are all things we associate with Japan. Unusual postboxes? Not so much. It may come as a surprise however to learn that quirky postboxes dotted around the country have become a tourist attraction, even the underwater one, which is visited by divers and used for sending postcards.

A quirky post box in Japan: Image: Dai_fuku_3 Instagram

A quirky post box in Japan: Image: Dai_fuku_3 Instagram

There are 205 of these unusual post boxes to be found around Japan amongst the traditional red ones. The first was created as far back as 1952, and was designed to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Japan Postal Service joining the Universal Postal Union.

 

More memorial postboxes followed, and a host of mice, penguins and all kinds of weird and wonderful boxes have since come along to swell the ranks. In many cases, towns and cities began designing them as tourist attractions in themselves.

 

 

 

#ぺんぎんポスト #愛知県 #名古屋 #名古屋港水族館 #ポスト #郵便ポスト#ぺんぎん

A photo posted by Mio Watanabe (@coco_mio) on May 5, 2016 at 11:21am PDT

 

The most recent memorial post boxes were unveiled in the town of Tobe in April, and the four boxes had pottery on top of them to promote local handcraft.

 

The small fishing town of Susami currently holds the Guinness World Record for the deepest underwater postbox, which is located 33 feet below the sea,. It’s a working postbox too, and divers can purchase water-resistant postcards to send from it, and the local post office collects the mail from it every couple of days.

 

 

Tourists wanting to visit them should check out postmap.org, which has mapped more than 175,000 of Japan’s postboxes. Photographs and a map pinpointing their exact locations can be found on the site.

 

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