When we were planning our second trip to Tokyo, we kept reading mentions of souvenir stamps. These are large custom stamps situated at major attractions and the suggestion was that you should give your child a notebook and get them to collect stamps during the visit. Now, call me childish, but I love stamps so we were on the lookout at all times. It turned out that most of the stamps are beautiful and intricate and well worth collecting. They usually have an image of the attraction and come complete with the date so you can be reminded of when exactly you visited. Some places even had special paper sheets that you could use the stamps on and fold into a little book. They are very popular with children and we eventually ended up battling with groups of Japanese children to get our stamps for the day.
I’ve scanned in a selection of the ones I collected so you can have a look. At the top is the stamp for Ueno Zoo, home of Ling Ling the Giant Panda and above is the gardens at Meiji Shrine. We visited both on the same day.
Train stations even have their own stamps. Thise are Hamamatsucho and Nippori.
More stamps below.
Sunshine City stamps for the observatory and aquarium.
Tokyo Sea Life Park had three different stamps and a little booklet available to stamp them in.
There were heaps of stamps at the Tama Depa, most commemorating the Tamagotchi/Japan Airlines deal.
I leave you with my favourite, from the Parasite Museum. Someone really thought about this one too much!
