Category Archives: Personal

Not What I Intended At All

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I just spent the better part of an hour trying to find a couple pictures I probably took. Because I couldn’t find them, today’s post is brought to you by bad planning and disorganization.

I had intended to write about various pen cases today until I started looking for the pictures I was going to need to do it. After a relatively thorough search of my computer and extra storage I couldn’t find all the pictures I was looking for. This means a couple things:

1) I’m looking in the wrong place.
2) I need to label my pictures better and learn to use keywords.
3) I accidentally deleted the pictures.
4) The pictures don’t actually exist and I only imagined taking them.
5) I took the pictures but they sucked so I deleted them on purpose.

All of these, especially the latter two, are strong possibilities.

One of the curses of modern cameras is actually caused by their strength: because they no longer require film, pictures are cheap to take and, because you’re not limited to rolls of 24 or 36, you can fire away with reckless abandon. The trouble is, you end up getting random details of stuff you don’t know what they are:

There must have been a point to this but I didn't label it.

There must have been a point to this but I didn’t label it so I don’t know what it was.

At the time this probably seemed like a good idea but I don't remember.

At the time this probably seemed like a good idea but I don’t remember.

I now have thousands of photos to sort through on just one computer and that doesn’t count the external hard drives. If I were more industrious I’d sit down and sort and relabel them all to make the searchable.

Instead, I’ll probably end up retaking photos of all the pen cases I wanted to talk about for the post. The problem is, there’s at least one pen case that’s been been put somewhere where I won’t forget it.

That means I’ll have to search until I remember where it is.

A No-Name Notebook from the Balkans

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When I was in Albania one of the few things I found that I still wish I could find was a bunch of cheap notebooks.

Although very little seemed to work in Albania from 1992-1994, someone managed to produce surprisingly good notebooks. They had plastic covers with an odd internal pocket and came in pocket and large size. They were about the same size and thickness as modern Moleskine notebooks. They had stitched and glued spines that laid flat when open.

I bought a stack of them as they were only 15 lek (about 15 US cents at the time; 25 cents with inflation) and used them while I was in Mississippi and after I came to Japan. They are among the few thick notebooks I’ve ever completely filled. The plastic cover made them comfortable to carry in the pocket but they were sturdy enough to write on without needing a hard surface.

My Albanian notebook compared to a Field Notes notebook. You can see the damaged spine.

My Albanian notebook compared to a Field Notes notebook. You can see the damaged spine at the right..

Inside the notebook. You can see the construction and deconstruction.

Inside the notebook. You can see the construction thanks to the deconstruction.

The paper seemed to be one part pulp paperback and one part newsprint. It was not especially fountain pen friendly as it was rough and scratchy with fine nibs awhile thicker nibs tended to cause feathering. That said, although it had a little ghosting, it didn’t have much bleedthrough so it was possible to use with fountain pens.

You can kind of see Noodler's Old Manhattan and and Apache Sunset.

You can kind of see Noodler’s Old Manhattan and can see Apache Sunset pretty well. You can also see the roughness.

I had two of the pocket sized notebooks that have long since been scanned and retired. I’m tempted to try to use the cover for something but it tends to chip off plastic bits as it’s carried around. I still have half of one of the larger ones that started out as scrapbook that was eventually abandoned. I’m also tempted to start carry it in order to finish it, but I don’t really have a use for it. I’d be carrying it out of nostalgia not need.

That said, I wouldn’t mind picking up a few new ones if I ever get the chance to go back to Albania and if they still exist.

Belated Popcorn and Half a Movie

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It was another one of those days, but in a good way.

Today our youngest insisted on going to a movie so she could use the discount coupons we’d received for some reason or the other. I used my powers of persuasion delay and whining (Example: “I went last time! I went last time! It’s your turn! It’s your turn!”) to convince She Who Must Be Obeyed to go. I pointed out that 1) the movie was in Japanese, 2) Someone would have to drive and 3) she could enjoy a nap as she traditionally falls asleep during movies (even those at home).

Oddly, this persuasion worked and She Who Must Be Obeyed took our youngest to the movie.

However, it turned out that they made it to the theater with just three minutes to spare and didn’t have time to get popcorn. (From my point of view, this means the movie sucks by default).

Later, they brought home Baskin Robbins ice cream, including the awesome (therefore doomed) German Chocolate Cake Ice Cream which gave me flashbacks of my default birthday cake when I was growing up. They also brought home the tale of woe about how they hadn’t had any popcorn and that meant the movie sucked. (Something like that.)

However, because they got back relatively late and because we’d had a hefty amount of ice cream, no one was hungry for supper. She Who Must Be Obeyed and I had a moment of ESP and we both said “popcorn” at pretty much the same time. This meant we got to eat popcorn for supper, which is one of my favorite suppers. (There was also leftover pizza, which is another favorite supper.)

We then sat down to watch Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. This time it was my job to sit with our youngest as this is a scary movie and I needed someone to comfort me. (Strike that. Reverse it.) She Who Must Be Obeyed finished her nap and we got to see half the movie before it was bath and bed time.

I’ll get to watch the rest another day, but probably without popcorn, which means the movie will suck.

 

Namisu Nexus Minimal Fountain Pen–Good First Impressions at Long Last

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I bought a couple pens in August 2014 that were supposed to be shipped in November. I didn’t get them until this week.

Thus far it seems to have been worth the wait.

First The Wait:
Kickstarter likes to tell the public that it is not a store. Its users are not “shoppers” they are “backers” and a lot of pixels are used to explain the difference. Quite frankly, a lot of the backers disagree with this lesson in semantics (I suspect it’s the exchanging money for goods thing) and they tend to get upset when a project repeatedly misses it’s deadlines, especially after the first few deadlines have been missed.

But it’s important, if you’re going to back something on Kickstarter, to remember that if it is a store, it’s not like a normal retail store. It’s more like a hybrid of shopping, investment and gambling.

In my case I bought a pair of Nexus Minimal fountain pens from Namisu, a company out of Edinburgh. The project overshot its 10,000 British pound goal by ten times, finally finishing at over 104,000 pounds. This meant, to those of who’d backed other projects, that the pens were going to be delayed. In Kickstarter, success breeds delay. If it doesn’t, it breeds crap.

That said, my problem with this Kickstarter is that although we got a lot of backers updates, we didn’t seem to get a lot of information. The deadline was always being pushed back by some technical issue and we would get more information later that turned out to be an update telling us we’d get more information later. I was an Early Backer and wanted to know where I was in line but I never found out until I got my pens.

The Pens:

The Titanium version (bottom) and the Aluminum version (top) you can see blue ink in the threads.

The titanium version (bottom) and the aluminum version (top) you can see blue ink in the threads.

The pens themselves are very nice, with a few small quirks. They both needed a thorough cleaning and I had to tighten the nib and feed on the titanium version. Because the cap threads are at the front of the pen behind the nib–which does make it more comfortable to use–the threads fill up with ink as the pen is being filled, adding an extra bit of clean up.

Also, the cap is barely bigger than the nib which means I have to be careful when I re-cap the pen.

I’ve used the pens for the past few days and although it’s too early make any serious judgements, I think they were worth the wait. The titanium medium nib on the titanium version is surprisingly juicy and writes like a broad nib. It also had a funny squeak when I first started using it, but that’s already going away. It writes well, but the tines are slightly out of line and will need some work. The aluminum version has a steel medium nib that writes well and leaves a thinner line than the platinum nib.

The machine work on the section looks great–part of the delay involved improving the fit and finish of the pens–but they dig into my fingers if I’m not careful how I hold the pens. The threads on the titanium version need some polishing as they grind when I put the cap on and off.

I’ve already worked the two pens into my daily carry by cleaning and setting aside a couple other pens. Eventually I’ll have used the two enough to make a long term review.

Until then, I have a lot of writing to do.

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.

 

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.

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.

Crowds Damascus Steel and Almost Cut Faces

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I almost cut a woman’s face off today.

In my defense, she was behind me and she was holding the knife too close to her face.

Today was the Japan Custom Knife Makers/Japan Knife Guild Custom Knife Show in Ginza. As always, I froze my credit cards in blocks of ice and headed down to the show.

This year’s show was crowded and I was pleased to see lots of women who seemed to have an interest in knives and that lots of knives were being marked SOLD.

Soon after the doors opened. It's already getting crowded. Not everyone is set up.

Soon after the doors opened. It’s already getting crowded and not everyone is set up yet.

I’ve been around the shows enough that people are starting to talk to me. I’ve even discovered a few English speakers. One guy asked if I was a distributor and I went “No, I’m a, wait, if I say I’m a distributor will I get a discount?” Suddenly he forgot English.

The other trend this time was Damascus steel. Almost every knife maker had a version of their knife made with Damascus. The man who asked if I was a distributor was famous blacksmith/steel maker Kazuo Nomura. His most impressive knives were mix of aogami super steel and different shades of copper. The problem was they were only sold as a set of 10 and the set was $10,000. They also had hand made maki-e handles to help justify the price.

The three on the left are part of the set. The one on the right is extra.

The three on the left are part of the set. The one on the right is extra. Would you really bone chicken with these?

Close up of the damascus steel. This would be a pain to clean and keep dry.

Close up of the Damascus steel. This would be a pain to clean and keep dry but it looks cool.

A different knife maker's version of Damascus. These are only $125.

A different knife maker’s version of Damascus. These are only $125.

Although everyone was friendly, I think it’s time to move the show to a bigger hall. As the show got crowded it got hard to move around in the small room. At one point, my Canadian friend pulled me away from a woman I was about to bump. When I turned around she was holding an eight inch Bowie knife up to her face to read the logo or check the polish.

Also, it would be nice to see knife-related goods like sheaths and sharpening utensils. There are already a couple vendors who sell knife parts for knife makers they should also start carrying some Japanese waterstones.

Despite the Damascus trend, there was a better mix of knife types than some of the earlier shows I’ve attended. They makers had flippers, lockbacks, fixed blades of different types and a even a few novelty knives that were kind of fun.

This is sharp and way too small for my hand.

This is sharp and way too small for my hand.

It made me look forward to the next show, which doesn’t always happen. I’ll have to keep my credit cards frozen though.

 

Retro 51 200 Series Fountain Pen–Twenty-One Year Review

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I bought a pen in 1994 that I wouldn’t like very much until 2014.

Soon after I moved to Oxford, Mississippi to work on my Ph.D., an acquaintance of mine opened a shop that was way ahead of its time (i.e. doomed to fail) and featured items that wouldn’t be trendy for another ten to fifteen years.

I helped out by buying a dark green Retro 51 fountain pen. I liked the look and liked that it was heavier than my old Cross Century. The grip section wasn’t much thicker, but the barrel was and the extra weight made it much more comfortable to hold.

It turned out I didn’t like much else about the pen, though. The wood pen coffin it came in was cool, but it didn’t lock closed. If I grabbed the coffin incorrectly, I dumped the pen on the desk. I also didn’t like that it couldn’t hold two small standard international ink cartridges. (One installed, one backwards in reserve.)

Also, although the cap was apparently designed to be posted, it had to be pushed on hard to get it to stay. The cap flipped off several times when I was writing. Without the cap it was too small to use comfortably.

I could have forgiven that, though, if the nib had been better. I always found the steel M nib scratchy and dry. After several months of use and attempting to like it, I ended up switching back to my Cross Century (until I discovered the Pilot Vanishing Point).

Also, almost as soon as I started using it regularly, it got chips in the enamel paint, exposing the brass underneath. Even worse, the gold plating on the clip and the band started wearing off.

I stored the Retro 51 and almost literally let it rot as I didn’t bother cleaning it much before putting it in storage.

 

Here you can see the corrosion and the size.

Here you can see the size and the corrosion from all the years of neglect.

Detail of the lost gilding and the Retro 51 Logo.

Detail of the lost gilding and the Retro 51 Logo. This all used to be shiny.

Me being me, I took it out of storage after 10 years or so and tried to use it. Me being me, I dropped it and left it with a nice hook style nib. Me being me I put it back in storage until I heard via the Pen Addict of a nibmeister named Mike Masuyama. Because I had another fountain pen/questionable purchase that needed nib work, I decided to send the Retro 51 along for repair. (More on the other pen in another post.)

Mike Masuyama did a great job on both pens and the Retro 51, after twenty years, finally entered my regular pen rotation.

Now, however, the pen is going back in storage. It’s too small to use for a long time and I have other pens I like better. I’m still annoyed it won’t carry two cartridges and that it won’t accept standard sized converters.

I may still have the annoying wood coffin, but I have no idea where it is. That’s also me being me.

A wider size comparison.

A wider size comparison showing the cap posted.