Today was the Japan Custom Knife Makers / Japan Knife Guild Custom Knife Show. Right away you see there are problems.

To my mind a custom knife is one made to my specifications. Although I could have ordered a custom knife (and one of my friends has done so a couple times in the past) what the show should actually be called is the “Japan Handcrafted Knife Show” or, perhaps more accurately, the “Brutal Walk of Expensive Temptation”.

The most dangerous table was a knife maker from Fukui Prefecture. His knives were not only nice, they were solidly within the “yeah, I could totally justify that” zone. I walked the brutal walk of expensive temptation a couple times and then left to run a few errands.

My first errand was a trip to Ito-ya to acquire a couple fountain pen converters that are hard to find in the USA. While I was there I discovered bottles of ink from a now defunct pen company and added those to the purchase as they have some resale value.

From there I went to a bookstore to pick up one kind of ink and discovered, much to my surprise, a different kind of ink in a cool, old-style bottle. I also saw the note saying “only one bottle per greedy reseller” (something like that). Luckily, they also had some hard to find flavors in newer bottles, too and I was able to get some of those.

(Note to self: plan a special outing with the girls.)

(Second note to self: make the ink buying part a surprise.)

I then remembered that the department store across the street also used to have bottled ink in the cool old-style bottles. After some searching, I found them and then engaged in the even more difficult quest of “finding a clerk”. After that difficult mission was accomplished, I was surprised when the clerk let me have two bottles of each flavor.  (The cashier seemed a little more suspicious of my motives though.)

(Note: if you’ve lost count, that’s 11 bottles of ink.)

I then got home in time to prepare the room for the girls’ return from the in-laws. I also managed, after posting a picture to a forum, to sell two bottles of ink and one of the converters.

Now I just have to sell the rest and make room for more. (Something like that.)

I spent part of the morning trying to convince a man and a woman that bottles of ink were not dangerous items.

As part of a recent, very low margin, side business I’ve been dabbling in, I will track down inks exclusive to Japan and ship them beyond far horizons to recipients waiting on distant shores who’ve shipped specific amounts of cash across electronic horizons to my near shore/PayPal account. I do this because some of the inks are so popular, the stores won’t ship direct overseas. If they did, they’d get bought out quickly and local customers would never get any. (I refer to this as an “export ban” and what I’m doing as running a blockade.)

The inks have sold so well that Sailor, the company that makes the ink, has been forced to change bottle styles because their regular bottle maker can’t keep up with demand.

The problem is, in order to run the blockade, I have to use the Japanese Post Office and it isn’t always much help. (Yes, blockade runners totally used the post office.)

As soon as I handed the package to the staff at my local post office, the woman noticed the fragile sticker on it and said they didn’t ship dangerous items. I said they weren’t dangerous. She then dragged some man over and I then spent several minutes explaining to both of them what I’d meant by “art supplies” on the mailing label, and then adding the word “ink” to the label, and then filling in a couple other forms involved in shipping things to the Netherlands. 

I then had to explain that, yes, I’d packed the ink bottles carefully and that they would most likely survive the trip, especially if delivery staff paid attention to the sticker that said “fragile”.

Eventually they let me hand over money for the shipping (more than I’d expected, making the margin even lower) and I was sent on my way. So, I presume, was the package.