In Japan, it is a tradition to send New Year's greetings in the form of post cards. At the beginning of each year it isn't uncommon to receive a large stack of greetings from friends, relatives, and well-wishers. When my wife and I lived in Japan, we adhered to the tradition of sending and receiving these New Year's greetings. Since moving to the United States we still continue to send and receive these messages, although not in as great of volume as when we lived in Japan.

Now my wife and I live in a smallish town in Central Minnesota. I daresay that my wife is the only Japanese person in our town. I am also pretty sure that we are the only people in town who receive regular correspondence from Japan.

Today we received an interesting New Year's card from Japan. It wasn't addressed to us. In fact, it was addressed to the Okada family living in Findlay, Ohio. (For those of you who aren't familiar with US geography, Ohio is 4 states east of here. That's plenty far!)

I can understand that the folks at the post office may -without thinking- send any letters from Japan that roll in to our house, but how did a letter addressed to an Ohio residence end up in a semi-rural Minnesota post office?

Kind of crazy, huh?