LIAN PEK, CNN ANCHOR: In what could be an emerging trend in Japan, people are lining up to get their picture taken, just to mail it off. Denise Dillon explains.</s>DENISE DILLON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Smile. You could be on an envelope. This woman is her picture taken and turning it into postage stamps. The whole process only takes about 30 minutes. Once your picture is taken and in the computer, it's printed onto a sheet of stamps. This man had his photo taken with his children.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  (through translator): We take a lot of photographs of our children. I want to use this to send pictures of the kids to my relatives.</s>DILLON: The post office is hoping it would start a new trend and people might start writing more letters, something that seems to have gone by the wayside with the emergence of e-mail.</s>HATSUMI SHIMIZU, POSTS MINISTRY OFFICIAL (through translator): Certainly, e-mail is a useful method of communication, but letters are fun in a different way. We want to show young people that letters can be fun too.</s>DILLON: These vanity stamps are only on sale in Japan for a short time. It's part of the international postage stamp exhibit. But they proved to be very popular; 1,000 sets went in less than 30 minutes. Now postal officials in Japan say that personal touch might keep customers coming back and are consider selling them on a regular basis. Denise Dillon, CNN.
Japanese Get Family Photos Put on Stamps