The Pen Addict 45/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	45
Title:	Turning Japanese
Release Date:	March 11th, 2013
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 45
Audio File:	Audio Episode 45
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 45
Length:	5555 min <br />0.917 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to The Pen Addict podcast, episode number 45. The Pen Addict podcast is a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the stationery things that we love so much. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined, as always, by the sensei of stationery, that is, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Guest: Oh, nice. I like that. Thank you. How are you doing?

Myke Hurley: I'm good, mate. I must say I planned that one ahead a little bit because of our topic today.

Guest: Yeah, that's good. I didn't think of that. It fits in perfectly with what we're going to be talking about.

Japanese Pens

Myke Hurley: You are the sensei. But before we jump into our topic today, which is we're going to be talking about Japanese pens today, aren't we?

Guest: Yes, yeah. Got some good feedback on some Japanese pens. It's a topic we've had kind of ready to roll here for a few weeks now, so I'm glad we're able to get to it. Actually, it worked out well because I was able to add a few things, too, that were kind of important to talk about.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, and obviously it helped because we're a little bit ahead.

Guest: Yeah, it helped more than you know because there's no way I would have put – I didn't have anything ready between our last episode and this episode, so I'm glad we kind of had this planned out already. It made my life a lot easier.

Myke Hurley: Good. So yeah, obviously we had an episode Thursday and today is Monday when we're recording and releasing.

Guest: Yeah, we're going to be on the weird schedule here for a few weeks and then we're going to be almost a week and a half until our next episode. It will be next week, but it will be late next week, I think Thursday.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I think people just want an episode. They've seen us go before. Brad, they don't want it to happen again.

Guest: I know. I know. It won't happen. Promise.

Myke Hurley: So I just want to follow up very quickly because I mentioned on last week's episode that I bought the Field Notes archive box and it has arrived.

Guest: That was quick.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, very fast actually. It was like four or five days, which for international shipping is incredible. When I've ordered things from Field Notes in the past, they've maybe taken a week or two. If you remember, I was waiting for quite a while for my Expedition Edition, wasn't I? Yeah. And I bought them on the day. So it might have been just because this was a large item that they had to pay potentially more expensive shipping. So maybe it came quicker.

Myke Hurley: It's as well made as you would imagine it would be from the guys over at Field Notes. It's got a real nice feel to it. It feels very handmade. Nice wood. Smells great.

Myke Hurley: I was just saying to you before we started, like the dimensions of it surprised me. It's a lot bigger than I expected. It's basically, it's about an inch bigger than the National Crop Edition box. So it's significantly larger. It's a good few inches, maybe two inches larger. It's maybe an inch and a half, two inches larger than a Field Notes book when you stand it up. And this surprised me. And I potentially think that this is future planning for them. That maybe they expect to do more boxed editions.

Myke Hurley: I guess that was pretty nice. I mean, I really like the National Crop Set. And I hope that they do more like that. And I think that this might be them thinking ahead, you know. Because there's no reason why you would have it this much larger than the books.

Guest: Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, maybe it's, you know, you just don't want to make as tight as possible. Just, you know, for the books down the line, you know, something might be coming out where, you know, you can store the larger, you know, if it comes in a different type of packaging.

Myke Hurley: Do you know what I would love? What? I would love a Moleskine sized one. What do you mean? You know, like a thick.

Guest: Oh, like a single large one.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, like, you know, the drive into the gap book. Yeah. That sort of size. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be good. And they've stamped like a Field Notes logo into the top. It looks like it's been heat stamped. So it's dark brown wood. I'm going to put a couple of pictures into the show notes because I've also put my memo books in there.

Guest: Oh, good. I'd like to see that.

Myke Hurley: So I've organized them by date order except the capsule editions at the back. And I put the crop edition behind that. Because it's the box. So I didn't. It would look weird. And then they're in date order by the style. And then I have right at the front currently used books. Like ones that I'm currently using.

Guest: How many do you think you can fit in there? You fit everything you have in there, right?

Myke Hurley: I can fit everything I have in there. And I mean, I've put some stuff in the back. Like I bought some of the bands. And I've put those behind. I mean, you could get quite a few in here. Okay, cool. But if I carry on at the rate that I'm going, I'll need to buy another one. It's very nice. They give you those dividers, but there aren't enough for me. I've already used up all of the dividers. And I can't find how to order them. But I guess if you email... What I would do is when maybe after my first colors edition or whatever, I'll email them and ask if it's possible to buy more of the dividers. Maybe they just hadn't thought of it.

Guest: Yeah, maybe so.

Myke Hurley: But I would, you know, I want to be able to... I mean, because I haven't even written on them. But what I want to do is to write each of the edition names on. But I didn't want to do that in case I run out and then decide to use them in another way later.

Guest: Exactly.

Myke Hurley: But that's what I would like to do with it is like write like Norvoli edition. And my Norvoli edition showed up. I have a packaged Norvoli edition now, which I'm very happy about.

Guest: Cool. Yeah, see, I've been scared to even look at the archive box because I know I'd need two right out the gate. I don't know that I want to go there yet.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I know. I mean, the footprint is a lot larger than I expected and it's taking up a bit of my desk space. So I actually need to rearrange my desk to keep it here. But it's freed up other space. I was just stacking my books on.

Guest: Well, I bet it looks pretty sweet on your desk too.

Myke Hurley: It does look really nice. It's very nicely made. And I mean, you know, you kind of expect that from them. But I'm really happy with it. Really happy with it. So, yeah, that's that.

Guest: That's awesome. Well, man, I didn't have too much follow-up just because the timing of our last episode. I did, you know, from when we recorded Thursday, I did a review on Friday, which I thought was a pretty cool review with an interesting ink. The Noodler's Rome Burning ink. That kind of copper brown that washes out into a purple ink. It can't be washed out, but it actually turns color. The permanency ink color is a little bit different. So that was well received on Friday. And then I think from the time I posted that Friday until the time we're recording right now, I haven't had time to do squat with pens or ink or anything. I didn't even – I wanted to get a review out on today on Monday for the blog. And, man, I've just been slammed. It's getting to be that time of year where we're just going sideways all the time. So I didn't have too much follow-up. I hope to get – after this episode tonight, I hope to get another review out tomorrow probably on the blog. I got a bunch in the can. I just need the time to write them up and do things like that. But I did get a funny email I wanted to share with you. It's really short and sweet, and I got a good laugh out of it. And the guy named Jonathan sent me an email, and I just laughed when he read this. So I'm going to read this to you real quick. So the subject line is, to a man of dubious influence.

Guest: So that's how he starts it. He says, good evening, good sir. I just went what can only be referred to in good conscience as ape poop on jet pens. He didn't use the word poop. He used the other word. And I thought I'd share my itemized list of woes with my absentee. Might as well be smack dealer, namely you.

Guest: So he went on. He bought a Fisher Space Pen, a Kaweco Classic Sport, a Uniball Karutoga, one of the Kaweco Clips in gold. He said nod to Myke. Nicely done, sir. Yeah, Kaweco fountain pen ink cartridges, a few packs of that, and a bottle of Diamine Oxblood Red Ink. With thanks for spurring my latest addiction, Jonathan. So I thought that was hilarious. I got a good laugh out of that.

Twitter Feedback

Myke Hurley: Yeah, Jonathan's email echoes a lot of the what can only be called abuse that me and you receive on Twitter on a daily basis.

Guest: Yeah, that's why I wanted to do it because we get a lot of this and it's like I blame you. It's your fault. It's all in good fun and we think it's pretty hilarious.

Guest: It's actually been ramping up on Twitter. We've been getting a lot here in this past – I'd say the past week. It's been something. A lot of fountain pen buyers, first-time fountain pen buyers, things like that. So it's always fun to get emails and tweets like that. So we appreciate it. Keep them coming because I got a good laugh out of that one.

Myke Hurley: Indeed. Yeah, I mean I always enjoy it. Sometimes I don't get involved in the conversations because sometimes I will come to Twitter and there will be like 20 – there's a massive conversation I'm involved in. And usually I know that people tweet to us but most of the time if they get your advice, they don't need mine is the way that I look at it. And if you haven't responded to something, then I will try. But I figure the best advice that can be given to someone is yours because you know more about this than me at the moment. Although I am – I'm out to get you.

Guest: Oh, yeah. There's no doubt.

Myke Hurley: But I always read them. I always read the conversations. I love seeing – this is what I – I always say this but the main thing I love about this show is I feel that we've got a little community based around it. And I love that so much. Like there are a few sort of frequent people that we talk to but people are always getting involved. And that's what I really love about this show is that there is like a real strong community of people built up around it. And I don't have that specifically with any other show. But, you know, like people talk about the field, about even necessarily referencing the show sometimes. And I really – that's what I love about this show and why it's easily one of my very, very favorites to do. And I'm always – I will want to do this show forever as long as you will accept that.

Guest: Absolutely. Yeah. We say it almost every episode. I have so much fun doing this and I always look forward to it. And the conversations we have outside of the show, you know, in Twitter or email and stuff like that are – you know, they're just fun. Everyone, you know, everyone's really passionate about these things. And even people who have zero experience with it, they're like, well, this sounds really interesting and I want to learn more. And they're asking questions and we're obviously open to answering them. And heck, half the time the people that follow us and, you know, read the blog and follow us on Twitter, they're jumping in, you know, with their opinions too. It's a good way to get feedback on lots of things and lots of answers to lots of questions. And I pose questions all the time too. And, you know, I've always got someone that's following that's able to answer me pretty quickly. So it's fun for sure.

Myke Hurley: And 45 episodes in and we've still got loads to talk about.

Guest: Oh, yeah. It's never ending.

Myke Hurley: And I know that's something you were worried about initially, weren't you, that we wouldn't have enough to talk about.

Guest: Yeah. I mean I do worry about that still. I was actually worrying about that today. It's like if I didn't have this topic today already prepped, what would we talk about? And I think we could probably just put a blank piece of paper on the screen and we'd be okay.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Because we're enthusiastic and we are enthusiasts, I think that there is more than enough to talk about. Right.

Microphone

Myke Hurley: Absolutely. So shall I – oh, excuse me. One second, Brad. I'm going to clear my throat. That did mean that you were allowed to say something.

Guest: No, I wanted to hear if there was a noise.

Myke Hurley: Of course there isn't. I'm a pro. I just go and mute the mic. Yeah. So shall we take a moment to thank our sponsor and then jump into the main topic this week?

Guest: Yeah, let's do it.

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Myke Hurley: I feel like I get better at that every week. You know, toot it in my own horn.

Guest: I've told you offline before that I'm just stunned how well you read ads better than anybody. And I don't know if you're like reading off a script or doing it off your head or whatever, but it's very impressive. I have a script. I've always been impressed with that skill you have with that. It's awesome.

Myke Hurley: I have a script, but I use it as prompts. I mean, I have been doing this ad like five times a week, every week since May. So if I couldn't do this, I couldn't do anything.

Guest: I might as well give up. Yeah, but it's different. I mean, you mix it up a lot. I mean, if you said the same thing every time, it'd be boring. So we mix in different things, different things. You know, if I'm working on something, we'll mix it in there. But I mean, you pretty much nailed it. So props to you.

Myke Hurley: Thank you, sir. So now do what you do. Tell us about some pens.

Guest: All right, we're going to – in my realm, we're going to go old school here. We're going to go with what started off the pen addict and why I started the blog in the first place and what pens made me get really passionate about pens, and that's Japanese pens.

Guest: You know, I talk about that a lot, and people still – this is probably one of the more common questions I get. People don't grasp the concept that there's differences in what they can buy at Office Max or Staples or Walmart or something than what, say, I'm ordering online from a Japanese importer like JetPens. So when we were – this was like a month ago maybe, and we were talking about show topics on Twitter, and we got on the – I got a few questions about Japanese pens. So I took two of those questions and kind of elaborated on them for today, and the first one's from Joe Lebo. We'll consider him our North American male mascot because we seem to talk about him about every episode.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I've received his ink. He sent us some ink samples, didn't he?

Guest: Yeah, yeah, the Bernanke quick-drying Noodler's ink, so you'll have to try that.

Myke Hurley: I've received it, but I've not tried it yet.

Guest: But Joe had a very good question I thought was an interesting way to put it. He said, what's your favorite Japanese pens that haven't made the jump to the U.S. yet? And this is what I'm talking about. There's so many – the options on the Asian pen market, for someone who has not looked at it or is unaware, it will blow your mind what is available compared to what's available here in the U.S. So I made a list of a few of my pens that are available in the Japanese market that I wish would come to the U.S. market. It's a pipe dream for a couple of them. A couple of them, I don't know, maybe they have a shot. I think it's a pipe dream for this first one I listed, which is the Zebra Charbo X. You never got that pen, did you, Myke? The Charbo X?

Myke Hurley: No, I've got the – what's the one that I have? I have a Zebra multi-pen. Yeah. I don't think it's the Charbo X, though.

Guest: I don't think so either. But basically, the Charbo is – it's a nice, heavy, you know, like a brass-bodied three-color multi-pen. I hate to use the term professional, but it's kind of a – it's a nicer-looking pen than just, you know, a plastic-barreled pen. It's made – the engineering of the pen is what sold me on it to begin with. The way it functions with like a kind of a – you twist the barrel to eject the ink cartridge, but you can just keep going in the same direction, you know, forever, twisting out the cartridges. There's no locking or no block to make you have to go back and forth. You can just twist it out, but the thing – the other thing I liked about it, the Charbo X so much, is that the ink refills, you're able to get a 0.4-millimeter Zebra refill in this pen. And so most of the Charbos come with two ink – two slots for ink cartridges and one slot for a pencil cartridge. So it's – they do make a three-ink cartridge in one pencil slot for a four-cartridge barrel, but I've never used that one.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, see, I've got the Zebra Prefill 4, and I have three colors and a pencil.

Guest: Okay. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the one that just came out not too long ago. So the Charbo is kind of an upgrade on that where it's a super nice barrel. And the ones I've bought are actually the lower-end ones. They run about $50. They're just a brass barrel, black. I have a solid black one, a solid white one. They go all the way up to like $125. They make some carbon fiber models. And it's really made – it was kind of a professional pen for the Japanese market. The only drawback on this pen is the gel ink refills. You will run through them extraordinarily quickly. On a multi-pen, it's a tiny refill to begin with. And Zebra Gel Ink refills, they just – I mean, they go fast and they're expensive. So if you're going to buy a Charbo X, I can wholeheartedly recommend the pen. Just know that it's – basically, you're buying a car where you have to fill it with premium gas every time. So it's an expensive pen to upkeep if you enjoy it. And I enjoy mine. I haven't been using it as much. I think probably because I've run out of my refills right now and I just haven't ordered anymore. But it's an awesome pen.

Myke Hurley: I've never used my prefill. I'm still using what you're about to say.

Guest: Yeah. What I was going to say is one thing the American market is sorely lacking, and you can tell by the topics I put to talk about, is multi-pens. If they could see fit for a company like Pilot to market the high-tech C-Coleto in the US, I don't see any reason why that wouldn't be successful.

Guest: I mean, I can't come up with a scenario where if you put the Coleto barrel in staples and have 10 colors of refills on the shelves that people wouldn't gobble that thing up. I mean, maybe they don't understand how it works. Maybe it's too strange or foreign to them. But if there was one pen out of this whole list that I have that a pen company should put in the US, it's got to be the Coleto.

Guest: I mean, it's the best multi-pen. It's inexpensive relative to most other multi-pens and most other pens in general. I mean, you can get a Coleto barrel and three refills for about $6. I don't know if my math may be off, but you can get a barrel for around three plus refills. So, $6 or $8. You can get a three-color pen. And just the way the market's going with customization, everything, you know, you're able to customize everything these days. Why will a US manufacturer not put a highly customizable pen in the US market? They must just not trust us to purchase it, which is kind of a sad state of affairs. But I don't know. So, that's a pen out of anything I would like to see in the US, the Coleto from Pilot.

Myke Hurley: I'm going to put in the show notes a link to episode six, a show that we did called Multi-pen Multitasking, which was all about multi-pens. Cool.

Guest: And I know people, everyone who I've recommended the Coleto to loves it. You know, there's not too many issues with that pen. If you like the Pilot Hi-Tech C, you're going to like the Coleto. You know, the barrel options. You know, for the cheapest barrel, you know, it is what it is. It's, you know, it's a cheap plastic barrel. But they do have some more expensive, a little bit nicer plastic barrels. But even the cheaper ones are my favorites anyway.

Myke Hurley: My favorite thing about the Hi-Tech C Coleto is the packs of refills that you can get. So, when I bought mine, I bought like a refill pack, which had like a bunch of colors in it. Just in like a little tube.

Guest: Yep, they come in a 10-pack.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, and I thought that was really cool.

Guest: Yeah, it was one of each. And I don't know. It seemed, it's, this one dumbfounds me. This one seems like a complete no-brainer. But if you look on the store shelves here in the U.S. or in the U.K. where you are, Myke, I mean, what multi-pen do you see on the shelf besides the Bic 4-color that's been around for decades?

Myke Hurley: I don't know. I really don't. Probably just the Bic. Like really. Or children's pens.

Guest: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: You know, like it's either a Bic or like really bright color children's pens.

Guest: Right. And I've seen one or two other ballpoint type multi-pens, but I've never seen a gel or anything else besides a ballpoint. I mean, it's just, yeah, they must not believe we want that outside of Japan. So, their loss. The next pen is a pen I recommend to, I don't know, I recommend this pen almost more than any pen. But people love the Uniball Jetstream and I love it too. They are looking for a different barrel or something nicer to write with. And there's one called the Uniball Jetstream Alpha Gel. And it comes in this killer looking black body with a soft gel grip. It's still one of my, after probably five years now of having this, it's still one of my everyday carry pens. And if I'm, you know, in my backpack in my pen case or something, this pen is always with me because it is so cool. It's totally durable. It fits all the Jetstream ink cartridges. It comes with a 0.7 millimeter refill. I buy the 0.5 millimeter refills and put them in there. It fits those. It fits all the colors. It's a killer looking pen, I think. Not everyone's a fan of the big grip. But I think they pulled it off well. Now, they also make like a silver one and then kind of a champagne color one. And I think those are ugly. But the black one, the black one is killer. And it's one of my favorite. If I made an all-time pen list, I think the Jetstream Alpha would be on it just because how cool it is and how versatile it is. And it's relatively inexpensive for a nice upgrade. I think it's about $16 or so on Jetpens.

Myke Hurley: I've never seen this one before.

Guest: What's that?

Myke Hurley: I've never seen this one before. Oh, really? When I saw it, I thought they'd changed it.

Guest: Yeah, if I went through my Gmail account and did a search for Jetstream Alpha, I'd be curious how many hits I would have from recommending it to people. Probably a dozen or so. It seems to come up a lot. And a lot of people that buy it, they'll come back and say to me, wow, that worked out really well.

Highlighters

Guest: And the last one I put on here from the Japanese pens that haven't made the jump to the U.S. is an interesting one. And this one could easily make it to the U.S. It's just from a manufacturer that doesn't have any U.S. presence.

Guest: It's the Kukuyu Beetle Tip Three-Way Highlighter. I love this highlighter. This is my favorite highlighter because the tip of it, it gives you like a chisel tip like you would think of from a standard highlighter. And then it has like this little peg that sticks out so you can have like a little underlining piece of a highlighter, like a little fine line. Or if you combine the two, if you hold the highlighter at the right angle, you can get a top and a bottom line over the text on the page. So that's why they call it a three-way highlighter. There's three ways you can mark the page. It's awesome. I buy these. This is pretty much the only highlighter I use. It works great. I like having the fine lines if I'm going to – I'm a lot of times more of an underliner than a highlighter if I'm doing that type of thing. So I use the little small tip a bunch. The only flaw I've heard with this pen is you have to be careful when you're putting the cap back on because I've had people rip the tip, the little teeny tip off of the highlighter when they're capping the pen because it'll catch in between the little notch there. But it's an awesome, awesome little highlighter and I recommend it highly. Have you ever seen that one before?

Myke Hurley: I haven't and I'm just looking at the image now and nothing says Japanese pen more to me than something like this.

Guest: That's exactly right. Yeah, it's awesome.

Myke Hurley: This is just totally a Japanese pen. It's just crazy. It looks crazy but it looks awesome at the same time, like really useful.

Guest: Yeah, that's what I was going to say about it. But think about how – I mean it makes complete sense though, right?

Myke Hurley: Oh, it's one of those things that I see it and I'm like how could nobody else have thought of this? Right. Like it looks – so you can do two lines, one line, a thick line or a different – it's like it says freeway but it's more like four ways because you could do like a really thin line or a really sharp point or it has like two lines or a thick line. Yep. It's awesome. I need to get one of these I think.

Guest: Yeah, and they're super cheap. I need – Kukuyu makes great products. They don't make a lot of products. They make some cool pen cases.

Guest: I think they do some paper. That's nice.

Guest: It's not – some of their pens offerings, I think they've done a ballpoint in the past. I don't think they've done a gel but their ballpoint was average. But this highlighter is fantastic and if anything, this would be perfect in the U.S. market or I should stop saying U.S. market. It should be the outside of Asia market, U.S., U.K. I keep saying U.S. but I think everyone knows what I mean.

Guest: So anywhere outside of Asia.

Pens Outside Asia

Guest: So along the same lines of this topic, that was Joe's question, my favorite pens that haven't made the jump out of Asia yet. And then Greg Jackson asked, what are the North American versions of pens that aren't the same as their Japanese versions?

Myke Hurley: Oh, that's interesting.

Guest: Yeah, I answer this question a lot. Then this – there's some fountain pen things in this too that we've talked about how there's differences in nibs from different parts of the country. I mean different parts of the world, different countries in the world. And EF nibs are not the same in one part of the world as it is the other. And a lot of pens are the same too. And I don't have any hard, fast evidence that says this pen is absolutely different in these particular areas than this other similar pen. But I've used them all. I've used them all for years. And there are absolutely differences in how some of these pens write that you would think would write the same. One of the most popular ones is the Uniball Sino DX.

Guest: It's the MicroTip gel ink pen that I recommend more than any pen, even more than the Pilot Hitec C, especially to new users.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I think you sent me one of these.

Guest: Mm-hmm. So the .38 millimeter Sino DX. All right. This is the biggest Uniball gel pen that doesn't seem to have a perfect match outside of Asia. So in the U.S., you can get a Uniball Sino RT, which is a retractable, in .38 millimeter. You can get a Uniball Sino 207 that they've had around for years in .38 millimeter, which they just started offering that last year. But the Sino DX .38 millimeter writes differently than those two pens, and it writes better than those two pens. And I can't explain why.

Myke Hurley: That's so weird.

Guest: They don't offer that barrel style outside of Asia.

Guest: And the tip of the pen is superior to the .38 Uniball pens that are available in the U.S. And I can't explain it. You can put them side by side. Like, I have plenty of Sino RTs, I have plenty of Sino 207s, and I have the DX. And it's immediate, the difference that I can feel. The DX .38 is much smoother than the other two that are available in the U.S. So the DX is one of those pens that has never been available other than from an importer. And it's a basic pen, and it comes in a million colors and a million tip sizes. But I've never seen it on a store shelf, and I've never seen an exact comparable to the DX in what Uniball offers on the shelves right now.

Myke Hurley: Why do you think this is? Is it because of the size?

Guest: No, because the .38 RTs and 207s, they're available. It's theoretically the same size. I don't know. They're just scratchier to me.

Myke Hurley: Like, why would they think that a different market requires a different refill? Like, a totally different refill? Like, a different, obviously, process of manufacture? Yeah. Because I assume they're probably all being made abroad and sent here or there.

Guest: Right. And the DX refill is one of those refills like the high-tech C where people love it so much they want a nicer barrel for it. But the DX refill doesn't match up easily with anything else. Like, my DX refills won't fit in any other Uniball barrels. What? That's crazy. Yeah. I don't know what the deal is.

Myke Hurley: But the barrels, the DX barrels here and in Japan, are they... Like, so the DX doesn't have a counterpoint, so you can't fit those in any other Uniball comfortably?

Guest: Right.

Myke Hurley: So maybe it's something about, like, thickness might be something to do with the way that the ink is distributed.

Guest: Yeah. I don't know if it's an ink formulation. I don't know if there's something different. I've never been able to figure it out. But it's better than every other similar Uniball product.

Guest: It just is. I can't explain it.

Myke Hurley: Well, that's why it's good that JetPens exists, right?

Zebra Sarasa Clip

Guest: Right. Right. Because this is an awesome, awesome pen. So one that I do have a problem with people getting confused on is the Zebra Sarasa clip.

Guest: The .4 millimeter, I like that pen a lot. And it's got a nice springy clip that clips onto things. And in the U.S., in the Japanese market, it's called the Zebra Sarasa clip. In the U.S., there's a pen called the Zebra Sarasa. And it is absolutely 100% different. It does not write anywhere even close to the same as the Sarasa clip. The Sarasa clip is one of the best writing gel ink pens on the market. The Zebra Sarasa is fine from writing perspective, the U.S. version. It is not the same, and it's not close. The DX compared to the RT and the 207, they're in the ballpark. I enjoy writing with the RT and 207.38 millimeter pens. They're fine. I do not like writing with the Zebra Sarasa. Only the Sarasa clip. The Sarasa clip is not available in the U.S. Don't ask me why. It's a cheap pen, you know, cost-wise. It comes in, God, that thing comes in 15, 20 colors. There's no reason why the clip version can't be marketed in the U.S. or Europe. But it's not. And the Zebra Sarasa is not the same pen. I have that discussion a lot with a lot of people. They say, oh, I got the Sarasa from Staples, and, you know, it's just kind of okay. It's not as good as you say. I was like, well, that's not the same pen. They're not even close. And Zebra's done another thing that's gotten under my skin, Michael. And I love Zebra, so I don't want to knock on them.

Myke Hurley: But you've got to.

Guest: I got to. So in Japan, which gets all the cool stuff first. If you listen to the Pen Addict show, you know that. That's one thing that's given. Japan gets all the cool stuff first. So they came out. The Uniball Jetstream was so popular, and they categorized it as a hybrid ballpoint ink. So they had the market to themselves for years, and then all of a sudden, every other pen manufacturer came out with, oh, here's our hybrid ballpoint ink. So Zebra's was called the Zebra Surari, and they called it an emulsion ink pen. The way the pen, the ink cartridge, the consistency of the ink and the ink flow was a very smooth-riding, quick-drying ballpoint ink, just like the hybrid ink of a Jetstream. So Zebra Surari came out in Japan. It's a fantastic pen. Love it. Very happy with it. It was out for maybe two years, if not three. Then all of a sudden, they come out in the U.S. market. I'm strolling through Staples, and I see Zebra Zemulsion ink pens. I was like...

Myke Hurley: Worst branding ever.

Guest: That is just tragic. Why they would go and do something as asinine as that is beyond me. And I get people asking, what is this Zeemulsion? I was like, look, it's been out for years as the Surari. There's 10 different models. There's a multi-pin Surari. They're all available in Japan. They're all available online. And these Zemulsion inks, I think the finest tip you can get them is .7.

Guest: And it's just not the same. And it's kind of a wreck of a barrel. The Zebra Surari is a very simple, well-thought-out, clean-looking pen. The Zemulsion is kind of a train wreck. And Zebra, for all the great pens they make, they come out with some really weird stuff that just doesn't add up. It's almost like they're trying too hard with the marketing and branding and trying to... You look on the pen shelves in stores like Staples and Office Max, and you see a lot of the bright colors and the weird patterns and all the stupid-looking stuff. And if they would just keep it a little bit more simple, it might do a little bit better. But I have no use for a Zemulsion pen. And that's kind of a bad idea, in my opinion.

Myke Hurley: It looks terrible.

Guest: Yeah. But the Zebra Surari, I love it. It's a great pen. It's well-designed. Plus, it comes in .5mm, which I enjoy. You know, that's another... That's a whole other rant that I've had several times. You know, even a lot of these pens that are different in the U.S., well, one of the reasons is they won't go as fine a tip as the Japanese market. The Japanese market will have one or two levels finer than in the U.S.

Myke Hurley: So we get the Sarasa, and it's called the Sarasa.

Guest: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: And then, obviously, the Surari is with a similar name, but it's not called that.

Guest: No. It's the Zemulsion, you know, because they're Zebra.

Myke Hurley: I don't get why they have Sarasa. It's strange. Very strange. Why not call that the Z-Gel?

Guest: They might actually have a Z-Gel.

Guest: I don't know. I don't buy many... I love Zebra's Japanese products, and there's only a few Zebra North America products that I enjoy.

Guest: Crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy.

Myke Hurley: They have the Zebra Z-Grip.

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. That's a company that has two very disparate product lines. What they do in Asia is so far different than what they do in the U.S. It's like they're a separate company. Like they're completely unrelated companies. Uniball and Pilot, there's at least a few similarities here and there. Zebra, it's completely opposite, it seems like. It's very odd, very strange.

Myke Hurley: They have very strange names. Can I read you? This is from Zebra. Zebra, obviously. Obviously. Zed. This comes from their website. This is just their gel ink products. They have the Z-Grip gel, the Sarasa SE, the Sarasa Metallic, the Z-Grip Max, the Sarasa, the Orbits with a Z, the J-Roller RX, the Jimny gel roller, the great GR8 gel, Sarasa clip, and the Jimny gel retractable.

Guest: That's America for you.

Guest: We need the really whack marketing to sell us products here in America. Does it have bacon on it?

Guest: That would make it better.

Myke Hurley: It would.

Zebra Pens

Guest: Yeah, I don't get it. But, I mean, a few of those products are outside of their gel. You know, the F301, F701, those are all really good pens. But, yeah, their marketing otherwise is pretty shot in my book.

Myke Hurley: It just seems like there is an inconsistency with their product branding. Like, it's just poor. It's really poor, I think. Like, there shouldn't be all those different names. Like, where's this Jimny? And, like, why great gel? Like, they're clearly doing something with the Z, right? Or the Z, you know, in America. So, if they want to call them all Z-Grip, Z-gel, fine. But, like, Orbits with a Z, you know, cool. But why J-Roller and Jimny and great gel? It's very strange.

Guest: I don't know. There's lots of opportunities for American pen companies. And none of them seem to see the light very well.

Myke Hurley: Do you know, like, is this, are they branded by a U.S. subsidiary?

Guest: Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I mean, I won't speak to it 100%. But, you know, I've communicated with Zebra's U.S. office. And they seem like they're totally unrelated. Like, I think I've asked them, maybe asked them questions in the past about some Japanese model. And it's almost like they don't know what I'm talking about. So, it's that different, I believe.

Myke Hurley: I don't mean this to sound as bad as it probably would sound. But I would understand more, I think, if this branding was created by the Japanese subsidiary. So, like, translation stuff and things get lost. And, like, so maybe in Japanese, like, the way that they sound or look is consistent. But once you translate them to English, they might lose that. But if that was the case, I would be more willing to accept it. But just, it's just very random. I mean, me and you sitting here could come up with better names for these products. Right. So, but anyway. Yep. Yep.

Guest: Anyway. Anyway. So, those are some of the pens that I use Japanese versions of that have kind of similar pens in the U.S. But they, you know, they're different. And, you know, another, that's a question I get a lot. What about this pen and how does it compare to this? And I was like, you know what? It's kind of the same. But if you put them side by side, it's absolutely different. I guess we need to wrap this up pretty soon. But I did have a couple new products I wanted to talk about. One I've tested out and one I have not. But I did a review recently for the new Pilot Hitec C. How did we say we were going to say this? Micah? Mesa?

Myke Hurley: Micah.

Guest: M-A-I-C-A. I actually looked this up. This is new in the Asian market and came in in JetPens a couple weeks ago. And I thought I might be able to get a word translation if that was some kind of Japanese word or anything. But there was nothing in Google Translate, nothing in any Japanese dictionary. And looking at the JetPens product description, the Micah basically means, I think it said, my pen or my color. It was basically, you know, like a customization type term. But outside of that, the pen is really good. I'm pleased with it. It's a longer, more rounded barrel for the Micah.

Guest: The ink cartridge is identical to the standard Hitec C. One of the things I wrote about in my review is if you're just buying these for refills, because you can't buy color ink refills. You can only buy blue, black, and red. So people like myself who use blue, black refills and other pens like the Render K, this refill is exactly the same. And it's like 30% cheaper than the regular Hitec C. So you should, by all means, buy the Micah.

Myke Hurley: It doesn't look very nice, I don't think.

Guest: I think it looks okay.

Guest: I'm not, I don't hate it, put it that way. The only issue I had was in the grip area. It was a little bit of a ridge there. It kind of hit on the base of my grip. But otherwise, I was fine with the looks. You know, I joked in the post about it being marketed towards girls and with all the marketing terms around it, like, you know, I'm not looking at it. So it said like jeweled and pizzazz.

Myke Hurley: Jewel like sparkly and pizzazz.

Guest: Yeah. So, and I didn't really see a lot of that except on the top of the cap, there's a little faceted jewel on the top. And I didn't even notice it at first. It's not, going forward, if I'm buying Hitec Cs, I would probably use the standard as opposed to this. You know, just if I had a choice to pick, if I had both of these sitting in front of me, I would take the standard over the Micah. But I didn't hate it as bad as I thought it would. I didn't think it was some overly feminine pen or anything. It was comfortable to write with. I like the rounded barrel. I like the length of it.

Guest: And I bought two of them, and I think I'll absolutely use them.

Guest: But I guess my biggest takeaway from that is the, you know, people want to know if there's any difference in the refill or the ink cartridge, and there's not. It's identical. So I can't explain the cost difference, but enjoy it while it lasts. If that's what you're, if you need purple refills for some other Kickstarter pen or some other pen barrel, this is the way to go.

Pilot Juice

Guest: The other Pilot, which I have but I have not tested out, is called the Pilot Juice. And the thing that interested me about this pen, and that I think is going to be something good going forward, is one, it only costs $1.65, which is pretty cheap for an imported pen. But what surprised me about a pen like this that's being sold that cheaply is that it's a pigment-based ink. And that means it's essentially like an archival permanent type ink. It's water-resistant, fade-resistant. You know, it can write on different surfaces. The ink's going to get into whatever you're writing on. Normally, pens like this are more expensive. So I haven't tested this out yet. I have it. It's been getting good reviews so far from other people. They enjoy it. So I hope to have a review on this, you know, in a few weeks. But I was really surprised at the features of this pen relative to the price. I would think this would be more like a $2.50 or $3 pen. I know that's kind of – that's picking nits kind of there on the low end. But if they sold this pen for twice as much, I wouldn't blink because, oh, it's got pigmented ink. That's kind of a big deal for people who want that kind of thing. And this is a very inexpensive way to get some ink permanent. So I thought I would point that out for anyone who is very particular about their ink needing water-resistant, fade-resistant. Some people will only journal with pens that have these ink properties for – you know, they want this journal to last a lifetime and pass it down to generations. So I would always recommend like the Secura Pigma Micron before Uniball came out with their Super Ink, which a lot of their pens now have pigmented ink. But they're the only other ones. So this Pilot Juice is an interesting pen that it offers about 30 different colors in all these pigment inks. So I think this pen is going to do really well just for that reason. So it's a feature that a lot of people look for in a pen.

Myke Hurley: You included a link to the Pilot Juice website. Yeah.

Guest: I forgot about that. I forgot about that in there. I did that on purpose. It's awesome. It's amazing.

Myke Hurley: I don't know what's happening.

Guest: I forgot I put that in there. I'm glad you said that.

Myke Hurley: It's a Japanese website. There will be a link in the show notes. And it takes you to like a subdomain, I believe. PilotJuice.jp. And then you – obviously, it's all in Japanese. You don't know what's happening. And there's a big red button with a blender on it. So you click through. And you're shown like a grid of icons of different fruit. So you select a few. You have to select three. And then a button comes up. You press the button. And then it shows – I don't even know what is happening now. I've got like – it looks like a whiskey bottle, a milk bottle, a cauldron, ice cubes, humbug sweets, an eye, some mint leaves. I don't know what this means. So then you select one of them and then another red button comes up. And then a blender appears and starts shaking. And then you're taken – you're given a result, which is one pen. So the only thing that I can assume is that there are different properties that you can mix together in the Japanese.

Guest: I don't know. I'm doing it right now. So I did grape, kiwi, and orange. And now I'm using something like a sunflower seed.

Myke Hurley: How do you get Google to translate websites? Huh? Isn't there like a type of text or a web address to translate a document?

Guest: Don't they do that? Yeah, but most of this is, I guess, Flash-based, I think. So it may not translate.

Myke Hurley: Right. How do you get it to do it, though?

Guest: I don't know. I'm in Google Chrome, and it will ask me to automatically translate it. So, okay. So here's what happens. So I picked my three colors, and I picked whatever feature the thing is, and it gave me a color I should pick. So it gave me one of the Pilot Juice pen colors out of all the features I used. So mine was leaf green, the color of the foliage sparkling bathed in spring sunshine. So you, like a goddess, is that the coming spring? Let me see. Like this, for example. Drifting classroom surly mood. While you appear while munching. What is our best onajiri? The mouth that laughed, tooth blackening of glue batari. So we should probably stop that now.

Myke Hurley: I feel like I need to do one now.

Guest: Laughter is fast, and furious air that has been frozen is solved at once.

Myke Hurley: Oh, the world of translations. I want to – I'm going through the process again. Oh, here we go. So let's see what we get here. You, Mr. Cachito, collapsed in the heel or slipper, or blackboard, that is graffiti. Disturbance of the public morals are nasty type. Tough opponent, but also even more severe because his courtesy or kindness there may still be. Cheers for good work. Thank you. Is true to nature. So I unexpectedly high support rate for both men and women. No, I have to be liked by stray balls and grandparents in the neighborhood. Moral miss to be liked by everyone. The character may not meet yet. Today, in the pastel green juice, you come check some public morals. Wow.

Guest: I'm moved, Michael.

Myke Hurley: This is like some beautiful beat poetry going on. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I guess you select – I don't know. Maybe the first bit is like smells or flavors or something or colors.

Guest: So you're basically putting together all your likes, and in the end, it's picking out a juice color for you.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I guess the second part is like maybe a property of some description that it does.

Myke Hurley: That's really cool, though. I wish that we could really understand properly what was happening.

Guest: And this – I mean, you think this is like a big deal, but all the pens in Japan have stuff like this. I mean, they make their own pages. I mean, in Japan, this is probably one of the cheapest pens you can buy, and they've put all this marketing into this pen, right? If it's only $1.65 in the U.S., you know that's getting marked up from customs and shipping and all kinds of other nonsense. If it's only that price here, imagine how cheap it is here, and look at how much they have put into this marketing for this pen. It's crazy, and all the pens are like this.

Myke Hurley: I guess if one of them does it, they've all got to do it, right? You can't –

Guest: Yep.

Myke Hurley: Or you'll get no sales.

Guest: Right. We could do a whole show on Japanese YouTube pen videos, pen marketing videos and commercials. They're some of the most hilarious things you've ever seen in your life.

Myke Hurley: I would like to see some.

Guest: Yep. So are we done? Are we finished? We're done. We're done. I'm glad you saw that link because I forgot about it, and that turned out to be the best part of the show.

Myke Hurley: Because I just – I clicked through because you usually have just the jet pens in all the other notes. And I was like, why has he included this? So I took a look, started clicking through, and I was like, what is going on?

Guest: Yeah, because I stumbled on that. I was like, oh, this is awesome. I've got to show this to Myke, and then I almost forgot it. But yep, my kids are apparently home. You can hear them now.

Myke Hurley: Okay, so it's probably the right time to wrap up. So you can read more of Brad's work over at penaddict.com. He is on app.net, and he is dowdy, D-O-W-D-Y, and dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M, on Twitter. I am imike, I-M-Y-K-E on both. Get in contact with us there, or you can reach Brad by email at thepenaddict at gmail.com, or you can reach me at 70decibels.com forward slash contact. So thank you very much for listening to this week's episode of The Pen Addict Podcast. I'm Myke, and he is Brad, and until next week, bye-bye.

Guest: Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.