I saw these toy capsule vending machines in Manchester’s Chinatown (photo from 2007).
In Japan there is a series of toy capsules, called ‘Miniature Mascots’. They are released with specific themes, e.g. sewing machines, camping gear, etc., as well as season.
Toy Capsules X Stationery cross-over = fun.
You can now get the first season of the stationery with products from Carl, Mitsubishi-Uni, Nichiban, King Jim and Max.
Have a look at this Carl Angel 5 Royal: You can even turn the handle.
https://gph.is/2vMci5Y
(This should display as an animated GIF in most browsers, if it is static you might have to click on it first.)
Here’s my little collection.
Carl’s Angel 5
Carl’s Angel 5 Miniature Mascot
The star of the collection (because it’s pencil related and the handle can be turned).
Carl’s Angel 5 Miniature Mascot
There’s also a blue version.
Carl’s Angel 5 Miniature Mascot
Nichiban’s tape dispenser and refill
Nichiban’s tape dispenser and refill
Also available in yellow.
Max’s HD-10D stapler
Max’s HD-10D stapler
Max’s HD-10D stapler, with refill 10-1M
Uni’s Posca markers
Uni’s Posca markers
Uni’s Posca markers, also officially available in the West.
King Jim’s Label Printer PRO SR970
King Jim’s Label Printer PRO SR970
I’d like to thank Yumiko for these Miniature Mascots.
As reported previously the Japanese Uniqlo t-shirt sizes seem to be a size smaller than the European ones, i.e. a Japanese XL is more like a European L. Funnily enough, this is not consistent across Asia. Chinese sizes seem to be like the European ones, not like the Japanese ones.
Uniqlo 2018 t-shirt
Yumiko sent me the Pentel Sign Pen shirt in 4XL. Thank you!
Uniqlo 2018 t-shirt
I assume it’s going to be like a European 2XL or 3XL. It’s certainly more than big enough.
If not: here’s a quick recap. Uniqlo has a series of t-shirts called “The Brands”. As part of this series, Uniqlo cooperates with international brands. Last time this included Pelikan and Tombow.
Well, the new Uniqlo t-shirt season has begun – and there are, again, stationery related t-shirts.
Japan has more large sized t-shirts available for the new series, but ordering from Japan might not be necessary… when I checked Uniqlo UK I saw that this time they stock three of the four stationery related t-shirts.
I’d like to thank Yumiko for this information.
The images in this blog post have been taken from the Uniqlo website. I believe that the use of the images shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.
Last month Tombow released a new eraser (Japanese announcement, Google translation). It’s quite similar to an old, familiar friend, the Staedtler Mars plastic, but with a Tombow Mono inside. The eraser stick has a diameter of 6.7 mm and a length of 100 mm.
Tombow’s new Mono Stick and Staedtler’s Mars plastic
Tombow isn’t the only company with new erasers. Look at this special eraser from Seed. Seed’s Radar is one of their famous erasers. This version has a sleeve made from 300 year old cedar wood.
Cedar Seed
Here it is again, next to some other Seed erasers.
..as well as a nice sharpener and organiser from Nakabayashi. There’s an automatic (~£28; $39, €31) and a manual version (~£9; $13; €10) of the Pacatto sharpener.
The Stationery King [1]Sean rightly wonders whether he shouldn’t be the emperor of stationery. did of course have several appearances, too).
…and now for something completely different. I dare to include it because it has hexagonal in the title: Hexagonal Phase.
The computer animations from the TV series were actually hand drawn.
I would like to thank Yumiko for the nice parcel and Gunther and Sola for the additional information.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy images in this blog post are from the BBC series of the same name. I believe that the use of the image shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.
In a recent blog post I introduced the new Pentel orenznero, also called PP3002, its model number (for the 0.2mm version).
As you probably know nero means black in Latin and Italian – and, surprise surprise, the orenznero is black. Nero is also oren, as in oren(z), spelt backwards. Pentel seems to try to emphasise this fact by not using capital letters and the o on both ends of orenznero is stylised as, what looks to me like, a lead in a pencil sleeve viewed from the top.
Thanks to Yumiko I got one just after it was released in Japan. Altogether I paid just over £30 (~$36;35).
Here are my observations regarding this pencil after a week of use.
Transporting this pencil
First off: transporting this pen.
You can’t make this pencil pocket safe very easily. It is possible to retract the sleeve, but you have to push the sleeve/pipe really hard into the body of the pen, for example with your fingernail.
It’s also not a great pen to transport in pen sleeves/pockets/slots [1]I am trying to clarify here as very different things are called a sleeve.. If you try to put this pencil in a pocket where the pencil’s sleeve or pipe will touch the material of the pen slot (think of something like the Nock Co Hightower) the lead will forward and possibly break in your pen slot.
Materials used
The Orenznero looks beautiful. Especially on photos where you think it has something of the allure of the Rotring 800.
The Orenznero next to a Rotring 800
In reality, the Orenznero feels much cheaper. The body is made from plastic, but it is nice to touch plastic with a little bit of a texture.
The surface has a bit of a texture (enlarge picture to see)
Handling
The original Orenz is a great pencil. It felt as if Pentel revived an old friend of mine, the Staedtler Microfix.
Top to bottom: Staedtler Microfix, Pentel Orenz and Orenznero
In my previous blog post about the Orenznero, I talked about the history of the sliding sleeve pencil and about alternatives, including very cheap alternatives from Faber-Castell that cost less than a tenth of what I paid for the Orenznero.
Grip section to the left
Well, I have to say that the Orenznero feels, of course, better and is better made, but because the original or classic Orenz was so good I somehow expected that the Orenznero represents a quantum leap for auto advance pencils. This is not the case! It is, however, a nice pencil.
The Orenznero will work great is you hold it vertically, but if you write at an angle the sleeve will not glide back properly as it does with the classic Orenz, so if you don’t use light pressure when writing your graphite lines on the paper will get very thin or will even disappear as the sleeve will cover them. The force needed to slide the sleeve starts very low, like a classic Orenz, but the more the sleeve is pushed into the body the more pressure you need, in the end up to 0.3N.
A picture from an old blog post to illustrate this
Advancing the lead with a click and using the Orenznero like a normal pencil is not an option as it will advance too much of the 0.2mm lead – it would break. One thing to add, the Orenznero is very comfortable to write with hand has a nice centre of gravity in the front half.
You can see the centre of gravity where the pencil is balanced
Conclusion
It’s a nice pencil, but it requires a bit more pressure to write with. This is off putting in my case, as I am not so keen on pens that subconsciously make me change my writing habit (in this case to make me press harder when writing), something that might turn into the behaviour I use with other pens, too.
Just because it is such a nicely designed pencil I will use it a bit longer though, at least for now.
Auto-advancing mechanical pencils have been around for a while now. The Faber-Castell alpha-matic was released in the 1970s and was, as far as I know, the first of this type [1]You can’t this model them for quite a while now and used prices for the alpha-matic can easily reach £200 (~$250; €235) or more..
These pencils usually work by forwarding the lead a bit when the sleeve or cone near the tip is depressed while writing. This will forward the lead a bit. As forwarding the lead is done automatically every time the sleeve is pressed during writing there is no need to push the pencil’s button anymore.
Pilot has a pencil similar to the Faber-Castell alpha-matic, but Pilot’s version is still made today. It’s called the Automac and looking at the grip section I think that the mechanism isn’t the only thing this pencil has borrowed from the alpha-matic. I think the Automac pays homage to the original auto-advancing pencil with its similar grip section.
My experience with auto-advancing pencils
If you want to try out a pencil like this: Faber-Castell still has you covered: For under £3 (~<$3.50; <€3.50) you can get a plasticky one with a cone that does the job. Ten years ago I used these a lot, just because of the novelty (at least for me it was new at that time). It was the only auto-forwarding pencil I have ever used. It worked well for me, but anytime I’d hand it over to a colleague to write with, especially if the pencil is filled with coloured leads, the user was almost guaranteed to break the lead and clog up the mechanism as it didn’t work well with soft leads, like coloured leads, at all.
When Pentel’s fibonacci mountain video came out last week I was immediately intrigued. In this video the new orenznero is used in a plotter. I never owned a plotter, but having spent most of my pocket money in the 1980s on computer magazines the video was more than fascinating as a normal plotter wouldn’t work with a pencil for long periods of time without some extra mechanism. Pencils tend to get shorter when you write, unlike ballpoint pens or fountain pens, so the plotter would either have to lower the pencil again and again (for wood-cased and mechanical pencils) or it would have to press the button to forward the lead (for mechanical pencils).
The plotter in Pentel’s video doesn’t do either, so the orenznero must have some sort of auto-forwarding mechanism. Just like when writing with a normal Orenz, you can write for a long time with the new orenznero without having to push the button to forward the lead, but this time it’s not the sleeve retracting, it’s the lead forwarding that makes this possible.
Some of the diagrams from Pentel make me think that their mechanism works even if the sleeve doesn’t touch the paper at all, but I am not sure about that and the Japanese I learned at university in the 1990s is just enough for me to decipher some Katakanas, not enought to figure out how the orenznero works, so I’ll have to wait and see.
The good news is that Yumiko, I mentioned her before on this blog, has bought me one already, from Umeda (Osaka) Loft, so I will be able to try it out soon.
There is a 0.2mm and a 0.3mm version. Even though 0.3mm would enable me to use Stadtler Mars micro and Pilot neox graphite leads I asked for the 0.2mm version as that is closer to a freshly sharpened wood-cased pencil and fits my small writing better. Well, it turned out that the 0.3mm version was sold out anyway and there were only two or three 0.2mm pencils left. Lucky me!
I would like to thank Yumiko for helping me to get this pencil.
Description: A pencil pot made from fabric and leather. Made in Japan by Horishima based United Bees.
Price: Unknown, it was a gift
Material: Leather (handle) and a fabric similar to what you find on backpacks
Further information: I got this pencil pot as a gift from Yumiko from Japan (Thanks). It comes with a cross type divider you often get with pencil pots – when you look from the top a cross divides the pencil pot space into four equal sections. I saw on the label that it is made in Japan, but didn’t want to check the manufacturer’s web site for more info as I thought that would bring me to the price and it didn’t feel right to look up the price of a gift.
What a nice surprise. Yesterday I got this Staedtler pencilmaker set. Christoph, a blog reader bought it in Staedtler’s shop in Nuremberg and sent it to me (and postage was quite expensive). Thank you very much.
The pencilmaker set came out in 2011, you might have seen this blog post at the time, and at that time you could also buy it online in the UK. I assume what is being sold in Nuremberg is stock left from that time.
I made a little video showing the set and how it is being assembled. I suggest you watch it on YouTube for a better resolution. I also suggest watching it with an increased playback speed (I like 1.5x).
ISOT 2016
ISOT is the International Stationery & Office Products Fair Tokyo. Yumiko has made me aware that their Stationery Of The Year product list is out. Thank you. Have a look at the web site. It’s in English.
What an exciting day. I got two deliveries, one from Japan and one from Germany.
Both seem to be XL… (Japan in green, Europe in yellow)
The parcel from Japan was sent from Yumiko, a friend of Sean, who helped me get a few things I couldn’t order myself …including Uniqlo’s Tombow t-shirts. I was able to get the Pelikan version here in Europe, but the Tombow version is not being sold here.
I was hoping that the Japanese XL will be similar in size to the European XL, especially since the t-shirts being sold here come with English/Japanese tags, but unfortunately it turned out that the Japanese XL is at least one size smaller than the European version – so the t-shirts won’t fit unless I lose a lot of weight. I guess I should see this as my incentive to lose more weight ..but I don’t think it’s achievable for me to fit into these anytime soon.
…the tags are different though
There was also something else in the parcel. Something very special.
The other parcel did contain a replacement Pollux. You might remember that had problems with my first Pollux. Thanks to Lexikaliker, without whom I wouldn’t have any Pollux, I got a replacement
Here’s a quick look at the replacement Pollux.
As a comparison: the second video features a knife sharpened pencil. You can also see Staedtler’s sand paper in the second video.
