10K yen for First Prize: Japan Post's 2016 New Year's Lottery Postcards

You may not in your country but we Japanese traditionally exchange New Year's cards. Japan Post sells both blank and ready-designed New Year's postcards about this time of the year, this year on October 30.

They are no ordinary postcards in that they carry lottery numbers. For obvious reasons of more people either cell phoning greetings or emailing new year's messages, Japan Post has long been having a hard time selling New Year's lottery postcards. Last year the first prize money was 10,000 yen and the total sale of cards was not that impressive.

This year Japan Post increased the1st prize money tenfold to 100,000 yen hoping to attract more to using lottery postcards. President Toru Takahashi of Japan Post said in his speech at the ceremony in Marunouchi that the company needs to appeal to the public the "joy" of sending and receiving New Years cards and strives to enrich characters appearing on the card designs and step up efforts to improve card printing services for young people via the internet.

Japan Post is selling 3,022,850,000 this year, 200 million less than last year.

Post offices will start accepting New Year's lottery postcards from December 15 and sell them till January 18 next year. Lots are drawn on January 17 next year.

New Year's lottery postcards were first sold out in 1949 on December 1. The idea of attaching lottery to the New Year's postcard was first suggested by an Osaka merchant Masaji Hayashi.

Barely four years after the war's end and means of communication were still feeble and limited. Hayashi appealed to the Minister of Postal Services to promote the exchange of New Year's postcards to help activate communication networks.

His suggestion was abrupt and momentarily turned down but eventually adopted. The special prize for the first year was a sewing machine, 1st prize pure wool cloth and 3rd a baseball glove.