How Do You Send a Nengajo from the US to Japan?
Sending a nengajo from the United States
If you have friends, family, or colleagues in Japan, sending them a New Year's card is a well-received gesture — and you can absolutely do it from the US. But the mechanics are different from mailing one inside Japan, and it helps to know what carries over and what doesn't.
What to use for the card
Inside Japan, most people send the official New Year postcards sold by Japan Post, which come with postage pre-printed and a lottery number along the bottom edge. Those official cards are a domestic product — you won't find them at a US post office. From the US, you have two honest options:
- Any postcard or flat card mailed with US international postage. The nengajo tradition is about the greeting and the timing, not the specific card stock, so a homemade or store-bought card works.
- A card obtained from Japan (for example, one a relative mails you blank, or one bought at a Japanese bookstore or import shop in the US). Note that the pre-printed Japanese postage on an official card only covers mailing within Japan — from the US, you still pay US international postage on top.
Either way, write the address in the format Japanese carriers expect; our guide on how to address a nengajo covers the details, and an address written in romaji (Latin letters) with "JAPAN" on the last line is deliverable.
Timing: why the domestic January 1 custom doesn't transfer
The most distinctive thing about nengajo inside Japan is the delivery custom: cards posted during the designated mid-to-late-December window — roughly December 15 to 25 — are held by the post office and delivered together on the morning of January 1, as described in Nippon.com's overview of the custom.
That batch-delivery arrangement is a domestic service. A card you drop in a US mailbox travels as ordinary international mail: it moves when it moves, and there is no mechanism to hold it for a January 1 morning delivery. The practical consequence is simple — mail early. International transit times vary with the season and the service you choose, so give the card far more lead time than you would for domestic mail, and accept that you cannot control the exact delivery day. Our page on when to send a nengajo explains the etiquette around late-arriving cards inside Japan.
Postage from the US side
Postage for a US-to-Japan card is set by the US Postal Service's international rates, not by Japan Post, so check the current USPS price for a postcard or letter to Japan before you mail. (Japan Post's published rates — for example its domestic postage list — apply only to mail posted in Japan; see how much a nengajo costs to mail for that side of the equation.)
The reverse direction is a different, well-defined service
It's worth knowing the asymmetry: going the other way, Japan Post operates a specific service for greeting cards mailed from Japan to overseas addresses, with its own rules, size limits, and zone rates. So if you're coordinating a two-way exchange — you send from the US, they reply from Japan — your correspondent in Japan has an official, documented channel for their half. We cover that direction in can you send a nengajo overseas.
What your card should say
Content-wise, a US-mailed nengajo follows the same conventions as a domestic one: a seasonal greeting, a short personal note, and ideally the year's zodiac animal somewhere in the design. See what the greetings on a nengajo mean for phrases you can copy correctly.