What are these A2 and A3 stickers?

Question

I just read the manga travel by Yuichi Yokoyama.

What is the meaning of the A2 and A3 stickers seen on packages and documents carried by strangers when the 3 main characters walk inside the train? A3 is on small tubes, and A2 is on a folder and an A4-sized box, so I guess it is not ISO 216 (paper size) though.

This manga contains zero dialogs and nearly zero text of any kind, except for A3 and A2, which are shown prominently.

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^{Left: A3 stickers on page 30 | Right: A2 sticker on page 31}

I'm not really sure what you are talking about, since I cannot spot anything in that image, but since you are talking about documents it might simply be their size as explained [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_216). — spiel, Feb 11 '14 at 15:11
Sorry I don't have any image of the page showing B2 and A2. B2 is on small tubes, and A2 is on a folder and a A4-sized box, so I guess it is not ISO 216 though... — Nicolas Raoul, Feb 11 '14 at 15:19
I just finished readin... err, viewing the scenes in this manga. However, I replaced B2 with A3 because that's what I found instead. — Aki Tanaka, Jan 11 '18 at 15:32

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 17 '20 at 09:17

While it's true that this manga lacks any dialogs, there are actually 2 pages at the end (pg. 196-197) that describe the whole scenes from the beginning until the end.

For page 30-31,

pg. 30-31

30-31 鞄の中にファクシミリ用感熱紙、コピー用紙、ファイルブックなどの文具又は書類が覗いている。

30-31 Thermal papers for facsimile, copy paper, filing book and other stationaries or documents are peeking through the bag.

Researching those things returned these images:

^{Thermal papers for facsimile by Fujifilm | Copy papers by Super Echo}

Thus, I believe spiel's comment was actually right: they are standard paper size labels. The A3 thermal papers are rolled into a cylinder, and the A2 copy papers are showing their shorter side. (Which means that the filing book is also A2-size, which also exists)

What are these A2 and A3 stickers?

1 Answers1