One of the few Japanese traditions I actually enjoy is the sending of New Year's cards, or nengajo. You're supposed to send them to pretty much everyone you know, thanking them for whatever they may have done for you in the past year. The standard greeting is 明けましておめでとうございます which kinda means, "Congratulations on surviving the previous year unscathed." so you aren't supposed to send them to anyone who had a family member die in the previous year, and you're not supposed to send any if someone in your family died in the previous year. In fact, you have to send a notification card in advance, letting everyone know not to send you a card because you are "in mourning."

Of course the post office is totally behind this whole thing, because it gets people to mail lots of postcards, at 50yen a pop. The post office holds all nengajo and delivers them on New Year's day, and hires lots of high school and university students just to handle the rush of cards at the end of the year. They run commercials on TV encouraging everyone to send lots of nengajo, and they sell blank, postage-prepaid cards for use in inkjet printers in front of al the train stations. The printer companies are also really behind this because it gets people to buy printers and use a lot of ink. All the marketing in November and December is about how easy this new printer will make it to design and print your nengajo.

As for the design, there are lots of set phrases that you can use on the cards. The most common design element is an animal, corresponding to whatever Chinese Zodiac year we are entering. For example, this year will be the year of the Tiger, so everyone features tigers on their cards. In the past, the cards were all hand drawn and hand written, but with the advent of the above-mentioned printers, people can just take a picture of their kid with a tiger and run off hundreds of copies, using mail merge to print all the addresses and never lifting a pen at all. Almost everybody either does something like that, or downloads a design from the internet. But of course I have to draw mine by hand, because I am like that. A lot of my current and former students send them to me, so I have to send out like 70 or so a year. Of course I print out the same drawing on all the cards, and just write in separate greetings like "Happy New Year" or "Do your homework!" Here is my design for this year: