March/April 2024

I was already filling up my 2nd eki stamp book and I realized that I need to get more just incase. I was Himeji Castle souvenir shop and I saw these smaller blank notebooks for 400 yen each. I bought 2 of them.

They are slightly bigger than the pocket size eki stamp books I had from Amazon. 

Honestly, they felt like the perfect size as you can put 2 regluar size stamps on the same page. 

 

My 1st use of this size book was at Fukuoka Castle. It was unintentional. I didn’t realize there was a Sakura Festival and there was a 12 stamp rally around the area. There was a map available, but I didn’t know where to get it. So I was just walking around trying to find the stamps. Unfortunately, I also had a limited time as I needed to go to Fukuoka Tower, then check out my hotel and head back Kansai. 

While this book did give me a bit more space, I did push it towards the end of this book. This was currently my last “eki book” as I needed to buy another one. I was stamping late at night and it got cramped towards the back. Hence why the Yamanote line stations were stacked up. 

The next day I went to Oyama and Nikko. Since Itabashi-san was driving and we were running around, I didn’t get a chance to buy another book. So when I ran out of space, I ended up stamping on the back side. I was hesitant to do this because I didn’t know if the ink would bleed through. My JR Kumagaya station stamp is really out of sequence.

There is also a Taoyuan Airport metro stamp. This was added on when I was in Taiwan and desperate for something to stamp. 

The other notebook I got I started using for “100 Best Castles” stamps.