Convey Your Condolence Right Away.
In November, you may start receiving some mourning postcards. Mourning postcard is a postcard giving notice of being mourning and refraining from sending New Year’s greetings. When you receive this, it is our original custom to refrain from sending New Year’s card to the person and send the winter greeting card instead in mid-January.
However, in fact, there seems to be many cases that people are too busy to react to the mourning letter and forget about it completely.
When you receive a mourning postcard, send back a sympathy letter. Sympathy letter is sent to mourn over the death and to support your friend or acquaintance who lost a precious family member. This is very common in the U.S. and the various kinds of cards are sold depending on the relationship to the deceased. In Japan, they are available at the large stationary stores.
When you receive a mourning postcard and do nothing about it, somehow it stays on your mind. Send a sympathy letter to inform that your thoughts are with that person. You will feel relieved and much more light-hearted for doing a good deed.
You don’t have to write a long letter. Just send a note wishing for the person’s smile.