A visit to stationary heaven aka Itoya in Ginza Tokyo

Itoya is the most awesome stationary store I have ever visited, period. Everything stationary you every thought about, have seen on the internet, all in one place. The Itoya store in Ginza is actually 2 buildings separated by an alley and Tiffany’s (English floor guide). One is called G.Itoya (13 floors) and the other is K.Itoya (7 floors). The G.Itoya is the fancier of the 2 stores, more like a department store feel, with a cafe, travel, gifts, etc. The most amount of fountain pens I have ever seen in one place is on the 3rd floor. Major major sensory overload. Fountain pens I have seen on manufacturer’s websites, all in person, all in one place. Not just Japanese fountain pens either, I have never seen so many Cross pens, or really any other brand I have ever heard of in one place. I can not understate the amount of fountain pens on display here as someone who is more used to either a Mont Blanc store in a fancy mall that sells mostly lifestyle accessories or the local Staples. Also ink, lots of ink, mostly in drawers. There is also a mini Mont Blanc store on the same floor. Fancy paper has its own floorin G.Itoya, and you can customize your notebooks on the 2nd floor of K.Itoya (also get your tax back if you have foreign passport).

K.Itoya is much more like an day to day art and stationary store with ballpoint, gel, and pens of every kind, staplers, cool paper clips. It is still 6 floors of stationary supplies. Including the most complete selection of Faber-Castell artist pens, it is like everything on their website in person. Including the Graf von Faber-Castell wooden pencil. The 1st floor is pretty much all pens, the great thing is that most of them had testers.

I ended up buying 2 bottles of Pilot iroshizuku, the Tokyo Limited Edition in fukagawa-nezu which is grey, and shimbashi-iro which is a light blue teal. 50ml bottle is ¥1500 each, or you can get a set of 3 smaller 15ml bottles for ¥2100. The one I didn’t get was the de-murasaki which is more of a purple. All of the pilot iroshizuku inks had testers in Pilot clear bodied Prera fountain pens. The more expensive fountain pens were all behind counters. The ¥1,000,000 Namiki appropriately behind a glass display.

Very much worth a visit for anyone who ever thought Staples should sell less electronics and more fountain pens.

J Herbin French Ink

The fountain pens I bought in January during the great fountain pen buying binge of 2016 are now all starting to run out of ink with the cartridge that they came with.

I have bought various converters for them now so that I can use them with  various inks that are available. I started with the basic black and blue: French produced Parker Quink black, and German made Faber Castell royalblau. As I started to look at ink, it turns out there’s a whole world of ink out there. Sort of like beers, there’s all of these microbreweries that make a lot of different inks, varieties, and for different purposes. Some are quick drying, some will last hundreds of years, some are fade resistant, some are water resistant, some are special editions, commemorative editions, limited editions, small batches, and some even come with gold flakes.

I decided to give J. Herbin a try. They have been making ink since 1670, including inks for Louis XIV and Victor Hugo.  What’s good enough for the Sun King and author of Les Mis is good enough for me. They also make the ink with gold flakes. I went with the more standard ink line modestly named La Perle des Encres aka the pearl of inks. Of the 30 rather inventively named colors, I decided to give Vert reseda (green reseda) and Café des îles (island coffee) a try.

I cleaned out my Lamy Safari, installed the ink converter, and likewise Pilot Metropolitan with quite a bit of a mess at first.  Then onto the new inks! Vert reseda is actually pretty close to a light teal that is more green than blue, and the island coffee is a light pleasant brown. Definitely give the writing on the page a pop. Not sure which brand and color I will try next, but just reading about some of them is already pretty entertaining.

Best of 7 (fountain pens)

Ended up going slightly overboard with 7 fountain pens after the Great Winter Fountain Pen Spree.  Averaging around $33 each, with a low of $12 for the Pilot Metropolitan and a high of $50 for the Waterman. Some I really liked, and will continue to use on a day to day basis.  Others very much meh and will be backup pens.  All are stock medium nibs.

Winner:
Faber Castell Basic.  The weight, look, and feel was just right for me.  Industrial, minimalist, and yet pretty cool looking.  Everything seems well proportioned.  Writes extremely well.  Blue ink that comes standard is less saturated than others, but very calm and pleasing.

Runner Up:
Waterman Hemisphere.  A much more classic and conventional looking pen.  Smaller and skinnier than the Faber, with a gold and wider and stubbier looking nib, but still very comfortable to write with.  Ink flow and saturation was very consistent.

3rd (tied)
Parker Urban. Very curvy and sleek.  Nib seems small in proportion to the rest of the pen.  Pretty comfortable.
Cross Century Classic.  The opposite of the Parker.  Pen itself is skinny (would like to try a bigger one at some point), but the nib looks much larger than rest of pen.  Hard to believe it is medium with the ink and saturation, especially compared to the Pilot pens.

5th
Pilot Metropolitan.  Great pen, medium is much thinner than others.  Plain  but aerodynamic look.  Can’t beat $12!

6th
Lamy Safari.  Like the overall design design, very different looking than others.  The angular grip doesn’t quite work for me for longer note taking sessions.  The one on I got, the nib is very scratchy, and ink flow was inconsistent at times.

7th
Pilot Prera.  Writes very similar to the Metropolitan.  Shorter, and made of plastic.  Was expecting more especially with the MSRP at $70 on the Pilot site.  Got it on Amazon for $30, but I still rather have 2 and half of the Metropolitans.

So I’m into fountain pens now, again

I haven’t used one since elementary school in Shanghai before moving to the US.  Rite of passage to own a Hero fountain pen.  Sadly no fountain pens in schools in the US.  The ones you see are often the way too expensive status symbol, but also very nice, Mont Blanc or Graf von Faber-Castell.  I took the plunge and started with a Lamy 

Safari a few weeks ago, and reminded me how much I liked having ink on paper.  So I 
also bought a few more for home and work.  A Cross Classic Century Medalist, a Pilot Metropolitan, and a Pilot Prera.  We’ll see how it goes when I go full fountain pen for everything.  Also thinking about trying different ink colors like brown, maybe…