Author Archives: DELively

Reverting Back to Sharpened Sticks

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One of the strangest things that happens to the pen and stationery addicted is they eventually revert back to using wood pencils. At least for a while.

I’m not sure what causes this phenomenon but most of us already have various versions of mechanical pencils which are sort of, almost, like pens. Moving to wood pencils therefore isn’t that big of a step.

Also, since a lot of us, especially fountain pen users, are already well lost in retro mode, using pencils gets us lost on a different level of retro. Sort of a Retro Retro.

In my case, I’ve always had a few wood pencils around in case the urge to draw and or sketch hits me.

Note: This urge occurs for about three days once every seven years. That’s one day to get the urge and go shopping; one day to actually draw stuff; and one day to find a place to store the new stuff.

Second Note: Yes, I know I have stuff on hand for when the urge hits but using it would require 1) that I remember I have it and 2) that I remember where it’s stored. Also, new stuff is better than old stuff.

For some reason, when I was making a lot of purchases from Levenger, I noticed they were selling boxes of pencils. I was most interested in the wood box they came in. (I have a thing for boxes more on that in another post) and them being stamped with the word “pencil” in six different languages. Each box had 20 pencils.

However, soon after I got them, I reverted back to using pens. Over time I’ve used almost one entire box and the other remains unopened an unused. In fact, the pencils are still in the plastic.

The last three pencils in the first box and the unused second box in the background.

The last three Levenger pencils in the first box and the unused second box in the background.

Now I hear there’s an entire store in New York City dedicated to wood pencils. Suddenly I’m feeling the urge to draw. At least for a while.

Watching You Watching Me Watching You

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Today I was in a room where everyone was watching me as much as I was watching them.

Today was the first day of classes and that means today was a kind of testing period. I gave the students an assignment and then watched how they worked and what they did and didn’t do.The assignment was to introduce your partner using only lies–they were supposed to lie about his name, too–and then the partner gets to correct the introduction.

(Please note: Yes, I work at a Christian school and, yes, I am teaching my students to bear false witness.)

I paid attention to which part of the room was noisy when I was busy with other students, which students volunteered to do the introductions, which students needed translations from other students about what to do and which students were doing the translating.

Some names I remembered from past classes and others I recognized from the trauma they caused other teachers. In at least one case, the teacher had disliked the student so much the student’s name had become a swear word.

At the same time, the students are watching me. How noisy do I let them get before I quiet them down. Am I keeping score.

The next class, when they are supposed to have finished their first homework, will be another test. I’ll be watching who has excuses and not homework and they’ll be watching my reaction.

Of course, one of the questions I asked them to tell me was their biggest fear. That’s what I can use against them. (Unless they are afraid of ghosts; that’s more problematic.)

Sales Pitches and Dirty Knowing Looks

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On Saturday I had the job of selling a class while also trying not to sell it too well.

At the school where I work the third year high school classes are electives. Students get to choose the classes they want and we teachers can teach any topic. In the past we’ve had courses in Canadian History, Media, Computers and Music. Japanese English teachers have offered courses on Nathaniel Hawthorne and Basic English. Students can also take Spanish and Japanese history.

To pitch our classes we write a general outline at the end of the previous school year and then are given a half-hour time slot and a room. During that half hour the students roam around to classes that seemed interesting in the outline and we make a more personal pitch and answer questions. The students then fill out cards listing their first, second and third choices and there’s a vote counting session that would put Chicago and Florida to shame. (More on that later.)

The sales pitch is tricky. As teachers our goal is to attract the right kinds of students whilst simultaneously attracting enough students to make the class viable. In the past I’ve taught classes in literature that ranged from four to six students, business English classes with 14 students and a class I called Basic English that had 24 students. (Important safety tip kids: never call a class “Basic English” because lots of students sign up; call it “Damned Near Impossible Hard Torture English” instead.)

However, you can’t oversell the pain. One year I had zero students sign up to a literature class. I was informed that this happening one time was forgivable, twice much less so.

This year I’m offering a course that will require the students to do a lot of speaking. I had a good turn out of about 20 students who arrived in three waves. That said, turn out does not always correlate with sign ups as the year I had 14 students I only had five or six students attend my sales pitch. Groups of friends divvy up the presentations and then assemble to decide which class to take. It’s also possible to end with students who put your class as their last choice. (They are typically not very happy to be there.)

During the sales pitch, most of the students I recognized as good students and some asked good questions. Others had to have someone translate my comments. I encouraged them with a wave of the hand and a “this isn’t the class you’re looking for” to take a different class.

Towards the end of the half hour a group of students I knew to be, er, LESS than good students walked by. I encouraged them with a stern look that this wasn’t the class they were looking for.

Sometime this week I should get a class schedule or much less forgiveness if no one signs up.

Noodles and Beer in the Afternoon

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A friend and former colleague is back in Japan and because I was at work on a Saturday (long story) he came back to the school and I showed him all the new toys that had arrived since he’d left. We then went for a beer and a bowl of ramen soup.

One of my relatives once scoffed at the idea of an eight dollar bowl of soup. I told her she was missing out. She remained skeptical even when I pointed out it was only eight dollars because of the exchange rate.

Part of the problem is that ramen soup, in the USA at least, is sustenance for graduate students. In 1995, while I was at Ole MIss, I vaguely remember the price being a dollar for a pack of five. A quick check of some websites tells me that’s what the price is now. This means, oddly, that ramen is one of the few foods to go down in price relative to inflation. (The inflation adjusted price should have been $1.54 for a pack of five.)

This notion of cheap graduate student food is also true in Japan, the difference is it’s also food for workers with short lunch breaks.

The other difference is that if you spend a little more, you get well made ramen, even at a national chain. My friend and I went to a chain that is quite typical of ramen chains. You buy tickets for what you want from a vending machine near the door and then one of the staff fetch the tickets and start preparing your order. This way employees never touch the money and the store has a good sense of what sells and what doesn’t.

A lot of this is designed to get you in feed you and then usher you out as quickly as possible. My friend and I, however, did not do that as the other good thing about most ramen restaurant chains is they sell beer from the moment they open until they close.

We bought ramen, gyoza and a beer and then got confused when we actually had the choice of bottle for draft (we chose draft). We both spiced up the ramen with garlic greens mixed with red pepper sauce and destroyed the ramen, as people are supposed to, as quickly as possible. We then sat around catching up for a couple hours hogging the only real table in the restaurant.

Oddly, we only had one beer each, at least until we visited a grocery store and my friend bought a canned whiskey drink and walked back to the station with me.

 

Addicts of a Feather Enable Together

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I spent the day getting bad news from my supervisor and then almost forgave him when I discovered he was both a pen addict and a Kickstarter addict.

It happened at the end of a meeting when my supervisor was scribbling notes with an unusual stylus ballpoint pen combo. It had a strange shape and I think was a digital pen from Anoto. Unfortunately, as soon as I expressed an interest in it, his pen addict paranoia took over and he spirited it away to a safe place so I never got a good look at it.

This brief glimpse, however, led to a discussion of various Kickstarter products he’d supported, and this led to a game of “you show me what you wasted money on I’ll show you mine”. I currently everyday carry five things I got via Kickstarter. This includes pen cases from Nock Co. and my new wallet.

I then tried to introduce him to Massdrop (registration required to look around) because he probably still has some money roaming around in his wallet that needs to be spent.

All this got me thinking about the ways we pen addicts spread our addiction. For example, my loaner pens are now a Tactile Turn Mover and a Tactile Turn Shaker. When I lent the Mover to a colleague a few days ago, he liked it so much he suddenly asked to see “my coolest pen” and I let him try my TWSBI 580 and my Karas Kustoms INK fountain pen. (The latter came from a Kickstarter campaign).

He didn’t seem as interested in those but he definitely liked the others.

This seems to be the most common way to spread the addiction: share the wealth, so to speak. I find that once people try the Tactile Turn pens, especially if they have the chance to use them extensively, and the see the different in quality between them and a basic ballpoint, they are suddenly interested in spending the money it takes to get the higher quality pens. Suddenly the expensive pens don’t seem that expensive. (For the record, My TT Mover came from Massdrop and I won the all titanium TT Shaker in a raffle.)

Then, once the addiction begins to take hold, they begin to think about fountain pens. Once that takes happens, I have a few names I’ll pass on to my friend.

 

 

 

 

Kokuyo IDEA Notebooks–A Good Notebook Full of Bad Ideas

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The Kokuyo IDEA notebook is a great idea in the wrong size and shape.

For those of us sick enough to follow the stationery and pen business, the trendiest paper you can use as a fountain pen user is Tomoe River paper from Japan. (Note: that’s Toe Moe Eh with the last syllable pronounced the same as “day”)

Tomoe River paper is thin but fountain pen friendly, meaning when you use a fountain pen, ink doesn’t bleed through and stain the page below. Unfortunately there aren’t that many products made with Tomoe River paper except thick notebooks and annual planners that are too thick to carry.

However, Japanese stationery company Kokuyo recently produced the JIBUN_TECHO or personal diary system (link in Japanese). It is a personal calendar and diary system comprised of a reusable cover filled with three replaceable and interchangeable inserts: DIARY, which is a daily planner made of Tomoe River paper; LIFE, which is a kind of organized book of lists made from thicker Mio paper; IDEA which is Tomoe River paper printed with dot grid graph paper pattern designed for random scribbles and scrapbooking.

The main problem with the IDEA notebook is the size.  At 21 cm by 12.5 cm (8.26″ by 4.9″) it is too big to fit in a pocket which means you always have to have a bag to carry it in. It’s also too wide  to fit in the popular Midori Traveler’s Notebook leather covers (more on that later) .

The IDEA notebook compared with a Field Notes notebook.

The IDEA notebook compared with a Field Notes Red Blooded notebook.

That, however, is my only complaint. The notebook consists of 40 sheets of Tomoe River paper stitched together rather than stapled and printed with a 3 mm dot grid pattern (with a hard rule on the left). Despite the size, it’s the paper that makes this an excellent notebook. Tomoe River paper is unlike any other paper and is a treat to write on. I use mine to record a daily list of ten or more ideas–business ideas, article ideas, blog post ideas, ideas for other blogs, and lots of bad ideas–and I rotate to through my various fountain pens and inks.

Thus far the only ink I’ve had problems with is Noodler’s Apache Sunset which seems designed to test the limits of every form of paper. It has a lot of ghosting and, especially with a thick nib and/or a flex nib, occasional spots of bleedthrough. This doesn’t bother me as I’ve learned to embrace the bleedthrough, but it can be a deal breaker for some pen users.

An example of the ghosting. Surprisingly, it didn't bleed through to the next page.

An example of Apache Sunset ghosting from a Kaweco Sport with an M nib. Also a good look at the dot grid pattern.

Unfortunately, the system isn’t very popular in Japan and I can’t imagine the notebooks being around much longer. That said, Kokuyo also recently released an IDEA mini, which is 18.2 cm by 10.7 cm (7.2″ by 4.2″) that appear to fit in the Traveler’s Notebook cover with some room to spare. They can be purchased from Nanami Paper.

I have a few of those, too. They are built the same and have the same paper and dot grid graph pattern. They just don’t hold as many bad ideas.

 

 

 

 

Getting Cold One Last Time, Probably

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I once had a Kansas farmer snicker at me in a “you poor naive lad” kind of way when I cited the TV weatherman as a source for what the weather would be in a few days.

One of the things Kansas farmers, actually all who live in Kansas for that matter, realize is that weather people are, more or less, making stuff up as they go along. In fact I’ve always argued that in Kansas “The weatherman says” is the phrase you use to start a joke instead of “Guy goes into a bar” This is because in Kansas the latter phrase used to be used in this manner: “Guy goes into a bar, finds out he has to buy a membership or he can’t buy a drink.”

Even though that changed a long time ago, “guy goes into a bar” jokes aren’t that popular.

I bring this up because despite it being almost shorts and t-shirt weather just a few days ago, today it snowed here in the Tokyo/Saitama. I was the only one who wasn’t surprised as one of my odd mantras about life in this area is “It always gets cold one more time. Even if you think it won’t get cold again it will get cold.” Today that was true with a vengeance.

Getting snow isn’t that unusual (it snowed in April five years ago) what was unusual was that it actually stuck in a few places rather than quickly melting. What was also unusual was that it kept snowing well into the afternoon.

It had a happy ending though because She Who Must Be Obeyed used it as a last chance to make chili. Since we used up all our kerosene for our small kerosene heaters we needed something to warm us up.

Tomorrow the weatherman says it’s going to be partly cloudy and 55 degrees Fahrenheit (13 Celsius). That’s a funny one. I’ll believe it when I see it.

 

Note: Heavily edited for clarity on August 7, 2015.

Levenger Sunset Fountain Pen By Stipula

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It’s really depressing when you open a purchase and your first thought is “How the hell am I going to get this fixed?”

This happened to me when I bought a pen from online retailer Levenger. The pen was the Levenger “Sunset” made by Italian pen maker Stipula. It had sterling silver decorations on top of blue cracked ice acrylic and that made it look vaguely like R2-D2. I liked the look and I liked the Italian pedigree and liked that it was priced to sell after a huge price drop.

This is not R2-D2 and that's a sunburst logo not a sunset.

This is not R2-D2 and that’s a sunburst logo not a sunset.

When I got it the first thing I noticed was the silver was tarnished. I emailed Levenger and their reaction was “Yeah, how about that.” In their defense, it wasn’t worth anyone’s effort or money to ship back to the USA for polishing and then have it shipped back to Japan.

I was also surprised that the word “Stipula” appeared nowhere on the pen. It only says “Made in Italy” under the Levenger Sunset inscription on the barrel to prove it wasn’t made by Levenger’s normal manufacturer.

I started using it and immediately liked the larger size. It’s 11.7 millimeters (just under half an inch) at the grip section and unposted it’s 5.4 inches (137 mm) long. Posted it’s an absurd 6.5 inches (166 mm). With the cap posted it’s too long to use comfortably.

The pen and cap. I like that cracked ice acrylic a lot.

The pen and cap. I like that cracked ice acrylic. The photos, unfortunately, don’t do it full justice.

A size comparison with my Cross Century.

A size comparison with my Cross Century. Note the scuff marks on the shoulders of the nib.

As I started using it I noticed that although it was a smooth writer–it’s a Rhodium plated 14 carat gold nib–it had an annoying problem. As I wrote, one of the tines would click out of place and I’d have to hold the pen slightly sideways to get an even ink flow. If I turned the pen over and pushed lightly I could hear the tine click back into place.

This became annoying enough that I finally put it way for a few years until last year when I sent it off to Mike Masuyama for work. He fixed the tines and smoothed the nib and it’s now one of my favorite pens. Despite its size it’s light and a pleasure to write with. It currently has Aurora blue ink in it which makes it even smoother.

The only remaining annoyance is caused by the silver plating. To accommodate the silver pattern and the sunburst (it’s not a sunset) on the cap, the clip had to be moved down the cap and this means the slot for the nib is small. Also, there’s a lot of metal inside there and it has to be cleaned frequently or it starts to corrode. Over time I’ve scratched the shoulders on the nib. It doesn’t hurt the writing experience, but I also have to be careful that everything’s centered when I put the cap back on or I risk mangling the nib.

That said, I’m pleased that after several years the pen finally became a purchase worth getting and something worth keeping.

The nib and cap. You can see the Levenger logo and the scuffs on the nib shoulders.

The nib and cap. You can see the Levenger logo and the scuffs on the nib shoulders.

Out With the Oldest Keeping the Newest

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I finally threw out something I worked hard to get.

As I gear up for the final few days before school starts, I’ve been using my last couple free days to slowly clean up bits of the house. (This is what I do when I’m babysitting.)

One of the things that had to go, besides old clothes, was 75% of my karate belt collection.

I’ve written before how I started studying karate soon after I came to Japan and mentioned how my style has only a few belts for adults. Because I’ve earned only a few belts and because I have the hoarder’s tendency to cling to sentimental objects, I kept all the belts I’ve earned. My original white, my brown, my black belt and my 4th level black belt.

I'm only keeping the one on the far right. The kanji is, sort of, my name.

I’m only keeping the one on the far right. The kanji is, sort of, pronounced like my name.

However, that sentiment takes up space so I decided to clean out a drawer and get rid of the oldest belts. It was cool getting the black belt, but it was cooler getting the 4th level black belt and a black dogi. If I’d continued studying (that’s another post) I’d have black belt with a red stripe and a lot more kanji on it.

The only catch in this plan was She Who Must Be Obeyed. She often complains about the lack of space in our apartment. However, right as I announced I was throwing something out, she immediately questioned the decision. On some occasions when she’s done this she has persuaded me to change my mind. That said, I suspect it is one of those signals I don’t read very well. She actually wants the stuff gone.

This time I was very clear the belts had to go. I don’t really need them and the last person to use the white and brown belts was a rugby coach back in 2004.

Blissfully Embarrassing Myself Without Knowing When to Leave

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Be careful what you wish for, because I just might say yes.

Although I’ve gotten a lot better at it, I’ve never been very good at reading signals people are sending and I’m not always fully aware of the conventions involved in certain situations. For example, in Kyoto, if you’ve been invited to a house for lunch toward the end of the lunch you will be offered tea. As you approach the end of your cup, you will be offered another. The savvy person refuses the second cup, engages in a brief faux argument and leaves. In Kyoto the tea is the signal the lunch is over and the host’s polite way of saying “Thanks, now get the f@#k out.”

I, on the other hand, at least when I was younger, would have taken the second cup after it was offered and then gone on blissfully unaware, once I finally left, that my host was spreading the story that I was rude and wouldn’t get the f@#k out. (So maybe THAT’S why I don’t get invited to parties. Too much tea.)

I say this because something similar to this happened when I was in Albania. A couple of our language teachers repeatedly said that the next time I was in Tirana I should contact them and they’d have me over to their place for coffee.

I was not aware, at the time, that this was the equivalent of “let’s do lunch” and “my people will call your people” and that I was not actually being invited over for coffee.

Of course, during one trip to Tirana, I called the people in question and said if the offer was still good I was in town. There was a brief moment of “Offer? What offer?” and I reminded them of the offer and was invited over for coffee and dinner. Well, sort of.

They had a small place they shared with extended family and I got the chance to say hello to several people and then got my coffee. I was offered a second cup and then time just kind of froze. I remembered that I’d imagined there’d been an offer to stay for dinner so we all ended up on the couch watching TV to wait for dinner.

After a while, even I could sense something was wrong, but nobody seemed to be dropping hints that it was time to leave. Of course, as it turned out, the hints had already been dropped.

I then entered a panic loop that amounted to something like “I feel tense and that makes them feel tense and I think I’m overstaying but if I’m not I don’t want to be rude but I feel tense and that makes them feel tense and I think I’m overstaying but if I’m not I don’t want to be rude but I feel tense and that makes them feel tense and I think I’m overstaying but if I’m not I don’t want to be rude but I feel tense“. Etcetera.

Solution: sit and do nothing until the situation changed.

After about an hour of the panic loop, it finally dawned on me that nobody seemed to be making dinner and I was the reason they weren’t. At long last, I thanked them for the coffee and letting me watch the TV show and apologized that I’d have to be leaving.

Instantly everyone got nervous smiles and escorted me to the door faster than I’d ever seen happen in Albania.

This last part was the hint I’d done something wrong. The Albanians usually made a big show of encouraging a person to stay even when it was clear they desperately wanted them to leave. The fact they were sending me on my merry way made it clear how desperately they wanted me to leave.

I apologized the next time I saw them and even apologized to some of their friends in the Peace Corps, because I was 99% certain the entire Peace Corps knew about what happened the very next day.

Since then I’ve gotten much better about reading those false invitations. That said, I probably always knew about those false invitations, but free coffee’s worth a social faux pas or two.