The card, postmarked Nov. 9 and showing the picturesque Kitzsteinhorn glacier, has reached its destination. But its sender, 13-year-old Nao Deguchi from Inawashiro, Fukushima Prefecture, will never come home again.
"It's lots of fun," she wrote from Kaprun, Austria. "I'm keeping a travel diary and can't wait to show it to you."
Deguchi, a second-year student at Inawashiro Junior High School, is among 10 Japanese, including her father, Okihiko, a renowned ski instructor, believed to have perished in the deadly ski funicular inferno, which claimed 155 lives.
All of the bodies have now been retrieved from the alpine tunnel and are in the process of being identified.
Deguchi sent two cards, one to her grandparents and another to her mother.
In both cards, she drew her smiling face and expressed her excitement.
To her mother, who stayed behind with Nao's 14-year-old brother, she wrote: "How are you? Aren't the two of you lonely, staying home all by yourselves?"
To her grandparents, she wrote: "Thanks for the pocket money. I've got lots of stories to tell you when I get home."
Deguchi's grandfather, Tetsuro, 66, said: "I was surprised (when I received the card). It seems she was having a very good time."