The theme of today's Culture Quiz is "sending and receiving a Japanese letter."
Sending a letter is a simple matter of writing it, putting it in an envelope and sending it, right? Buu (sound of buzzer). A good letter is always hand-written, in kanji lettering, preferably lettering that you have spent so much of your life perfecting, it imbues a quality that shows you have labored through years of calligraphy classes. Your lettering should be so beautiful that the meaning of the individual letters is barely decipherable. No matter -- the real meaning is in the feeling the letters give the reader.
Just one piece of stationary is sufficient, right? Buu. Not enough! It is considered polite to use two pieces of paper when writing a letter in Japanese, the result of which is often a letter with one very lonely sentence on the second page. Using two pieces of paper strikes me as being environmentally impolite, but you can be assured the reader will consider you to be very polite.