I’ve been trying to plan March, but some places are only interested in February. All I’ve learned is that knives plan better than pens.

February marks the start of knife show season and, quite frankly, the two shows in February are the best shows, with a special shout out to the show in October. I already know when the April show is and, if I dig around enough, I’m pretty sure the July show is already listed.

However, for the March pen fairs I have two problems. First, I have to navigate the horrible Maruzen website which only gets worse and worse as Maruzen gets new partners. Second, the website only lists special events in Febuary and includes events in Maruzen stores all over Japan.

The Mitsukoshi website also lists nothing for March.

The only thing I’ve been able to confirm, sort of, is that the Maruzen pen fair will be from March 1-7, with the Nakaya people holding court from the second through the fourth. The Sailor ink mixer will also be there a couple days as will the Pilot pen repair people. I learned all that by visiting the Nakaya and Sailor websites.

I ran into this problem last year. The department stores don’t treat the pen shows as anything particularly special and it’s hard to get any news about them until a couple weeks before they start. This year I’m going pretend I’m a member of the press and try to take pictures.

But it’s hard to plan all that when I don’t know when anything is supposed to start.