“Please fill out this invoice and mail it to our office within one month of the publication date of your article.” Ok, I can handle that. Wait…can I? It was time for a trip to the post office. Japan Post, here I come! To mail a standard sized letter within Japan, it costs 80 yen. For other sizes of mail, check the Japan Post website. 
Now comes the tricky part: the address. It is written upside-down, which sort of makes sense. On the top line, write the post code symbol and the postal code. Line two has the prefecture and city, followed on the next line by the block (three numbers seperated by dashes, which essentially zooms in on the corresponding coordinates on the mail map in place of street names) and neighborhood area. On the bottom line is the specific person or business who will receive the mail. Japanese envelopes have boxes at the top of the right side for the postal code, and the address should be written below it (a 90 degree counter-clockwise turn from how I addressed the one below). It turns out the Japanese postal system is very gracious to silly foreigners who can’t be bothered to address letters correctly….like me….and they also accept mail addressed in the western format. But if you were so inclined to make a go of it like I did, here’s what it might look like. This isn’t perfect, but it got there! And that’s better than…NOT getting there!
To mail postcards and letters to the USA from Japan, it costs 110 yen to send it airmail. The post offices are red and red Japan Post delivery boxes are everywhere and state in English what type of mail may be deposited. Some accept only local mail; others have different slots for international and regional mail. I addressed an air mail letter to my parents complete with my return address, which I hand-wrote in kanji, and mailed it from a train station post box. Silly me—the post office saw the part they could read and delivered it to my house. Well at least it got somewhere. Small victories.
