I’ve been out of town and stuck in a hotel (until today when I returned home). Out of boredom I checked my email and found out from an email from one of the bookish shops I follow (Out of Print) that the 13th was National Sticker Day! Because I was gone, I didn’t have the chance to access my stuff to show you what I have, so I’m doing it today (a day late).

As you know, I collect a bunch of stuff: Nendoroids, perching figures from anime, figurines, pins and buttons, special edition (and regular edition) books, BL manga…and now I can tell you that I also collect stickers!

I started collecting them in Japan when I lived there from 2016-2022. I have always had a thing for stickers, but never really saved them until I got over there. Stickers are readily available and are very beautiful or artistic. Those were the ones I aimed for, although I did grab anime stickers, too.

Not only did I buy stickers for myself, but I bought hundreds and hundreds of them for my students in Japan. We’d do a lot of competitive activities or games, and I had a sticker box where they could choose the sticker they wanted as a prize. This was very popular, and it’s how I learned about stuff like PreCure and Anpanman.

Anyway, I’d order or buy stickers from shops for them…and then get the really nice ones for me to save. I accumulated so much while I was over there that I bought a storage box to hold them all. Behold, the glorious box from Daiso:

It says “Let’s put a favorite thing. Everything looks amazing!” The English isn’t quite there, which will always remind me that I got this in Japan. It’s a gorgeous box, anyway, designed to look like a book. It even opens up like one.

Anyway, here’s where I would get my nicer stickers for me to collect (in Japan):

• Daiso – ¥100 shop
• Seria – ¥100 shop
• Tokyu Hands – chain store that has higher quality craft and stationery items but a little bit of everything
• Hobby Zone – sells anime goods but especially figurines and mystery items
• The Jump Shop – in Hakata Canal City, Fukuoka. Sells Shonen Jump goods.
• Animate – in Kumamoto City, Ikebukuro, and Fukuoka (although it’s a chain all over). Sells an incredible amount of anime and manga merch.
• The Sanrio Store – in Hakata, Canal City, Fukuoka.
• Amazon Japan – if you are going to live in Japan, make an account with them. I know Amazon is evil but they were great in Japan and saved my butt so many times
• Limited-time themed pop up shops at the malls in Fukuoka City and Kumamoto City

Unfortunately I’m not going to link you to any Japanese sites because shipping is crazy, tariffs are crazy, and I don’t know how comfortable Japanese shops feel like shipping to the USA right now when it’s madness.

However, I am happy to share with you where I’ve purchased stickers once I got back home. Most of these are reading and book-themed due to the change in my shopping tastes.

• Out of Print
• The Bookish Goods
• Awfully Nerdy.co
• Strike Gently Co
• @annguyenart

And now, here’s a quick eyeball of my sticker box:

My reading and writing stickers tend to be up top because they’re my most recent, but this is a pretty deep box…again, I have artsy Japanese stickers, anime stickers like Jujutsu Kaisen and Tokyo Ghoul, stickers with random hiragana on them, tarot card stickers, Pride stickers, and more.

I thought about removing them from the box and laying them out to take a picture of all of them, but the cleanup for that would be horrible. But I do have plans to get a sticker album so I’m able to display these pretty little things at some point.

Readers, do you collect stickers?