Unusual, nostalgic mailbox discovered in mountains of Shikoku tickles net users’ hearts

http://bit.ly/2WTSVqk Krista Rogers

The usual red design found in Japan has been replaced by a throwback item from your childhood in one locale.

Japanese Twitter user @ruins_rider, whom we’ve actually featured before, makes it his business to post scenes of abandoned buildings and other ruins reclaimed by nature. As seeking out these off-the-beaten path locales is his end goal, it’s perhaps fitting that he recently turned to Shikoku for his latest adventure. Shikoku is both the smallest and least populous of Japan’s four main islands, made up of only four prefectures. It’s also fairly mountainous, and is generally associated with its ancient 88-temple pilgrimage and sanuki udon.

Luckily, @ruins_rider appears to have had some luck in those rural mountains on his recent expedition as he posted the following tweet of an unexpected find in the wilderness:

四国の山中にあるゲームボーイ型の郵便ポスト #珍スポット https://t.co/KrHnMr8ERP

—
ruins-rider (@ruins_rider) June 03, 2019

“Somewhere in the mountains of Shikoku there’s a mailbox in the shape of a Game Boy. #rarespots”

Nintendo released the original Game Boy in April 1989, so this mailbox had to have been planted there sometime in the past 30 years. Where it came from and why it exists in the first place is apparently a mystery best left unsolved, but one reader did point out that a similar display is installed at the Komatsu City Museum in Ishikawa Prefecture (not on Shikoku):

@ruins_rider 小松市立博物館にもひっそりといます https://t.co/FVGfa2rc6k

—
ギン (@3nomu4Bin) June 05, 2019

“There’s another fairly secret one in the Komatsu City Museum.”

Net users not only appreciated the symbol of days gone by but also the otherworldly, melancholy atmosphere evoked in the photos:

“That’s really cool, but the atmosphere also kind of suggests there are ghosts around.”
“Game yokai [ghosts, demons] must be living there.”
“I feel like I’d be spirited away if I mailed something there.”
“Why is it so dirty?? Somebody, clean it!”
“It’s wonderful and lonely.”
“I bet it was leftover from some toy store and converted into a mailbox.”

While @ruins_rider didn’t post any specific location information, other net users were also clamoring for more information so that they could also pay the mailbox a visit and perhaps in the process relive a moment from their childhoods.

Source: Twitter/@ruins_rider
Top image: Pakutaso
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