Japan Post continues to provide full postal services amid the chaos wreaked by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
The postal operator says it is making every possible effort to deliver postal items in the country, including in areas where there are delivery difficulties.
The operator, however, is not collecting or delivering postal items in areas within a 30-km radius of the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Relying on information by international experts, including from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Japan Post says radiation levels in areas outside the Fukushima plant area do not present any risks to humans.
The operator is asking Posts worldwide to continue sending their international mail to Japan and to accept and process postal items it sends to them.
The International Civil Aviation Organization has confirmed that international flight and maritime operations can continue normally into and out of Japan’s major airports and sea ports, excluding those damaged by the tsunami.
Countries send 170 million mail items a year to the land of the rising sun, which itself sends 61 million items abroad, according to UPU statistics.
UPU offers support
Some 330 post offices were destroyed or damaged by the massive earthquake and tsunami.
UPU Director General Edouard Dayan expressed the UN agency’s "full solidarity and support in these difficult times” to Japan and the postal operator. He conveyed this message to the minister of internal affairs and communications, the president of Japan Post and the Japanese ambassadors in Bern and to the United Nations in Geneva. “The UPU will do its utmost to contribute in cooperation with the Japanese authorities to the re-establishment of postal service in the regions concerned,” he said.
International mail exchange offices in Japan are operational. Travel around the country remains difficult because of road diversions and other major disruptions, resulting in some delays in Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima and Ibaraki prefectures.
Japan Post is making considerable efforts to deliver mail to addressees, with postal staff even going into refugee centres to try to find evacuees and deliver their mail in person.
Because of power cuts in eastern parts of the archipelago, including Tokyo, the Japanese operator is finding it difficult to send and receive immediate track and trace data for express mail, parcels and registered items at its exchange offices (Narita Airport and Kawasaki Port), and in other offices in the affected areas.
The earthquake and tsunami have left 10,418 dead and 17,072 people are still missing, according to news reports.
Japan Post in figures
Post offices: 24,539
Postal traffic
Letter post: 23.38 billion items per year
Parcels: 2.8 billion items per year
Incoming mail: 170 million items per year
Outgoing mail: 61 million per year
Number of staff:
Japan Post Group: 226,967
Japan Post Network: 111,253
Japan Post Service: 94,110
Japan Post Bank: 12,060
Japan Post Insurance: 6,293
Japan Post Holding: 3,251