Sailor produces custom lines of ink for different stores and one of these include the line of inks produced exclusively for the Nagasawa pen store in Kobe, Japan. In my (no longer recent) trip to Japan, we did a whirlwind tour of Kobe, which included 2 main destinations – the Kobe museum and the Nagasawa pen store, with the aim of picking up a few of these inks.

The Sailor Kobe line includes 50-odd (and growing) ink colours, in the normal Sailor ink bottle, but without the little plastic insert. I actually prefer the bottle without the insert – I know it’s supposed to help you ink your pen up when there isn’t much ink left in the bottle, but the little thing is too small for slightly bigger pens – including the full size Sailor 1911 (large) which is a bit ironic, considering its their own pen. I tend to transfer a small volume of ink (roughly 6 ml or so) into a little sample vial to prevent contamination when filling and with the insert there, it takes about 3 goes to fill the vial up.

I’m terrible at describing colours, so I will let the pictures speak for it. It is a really bright, royal-ish blue! I like it in wetter pens, as it dries darker. Unlike other Sailor inks I have tried, this one doesn’t seem to have any sheen in the papers I have tried.

I find Sailor inks to be a bit drier – namely in that if you uncap your pen for a period of time, the ink tends to dry and give you hard starts, compared to inks like Iroshizuku which don’t seem to do that. This ink, however, didn’t give me any problems in the two pens I used for this review.

From a cleaning perspective (which in my opinion is the most important, as I am not fond of having to clean pens without much to show for it), it is neither difficult nor easy to clean. In my Sailor music nib, a few flushes and a soak in the Platinum pen cleaning solution (and a few flushes after) did the trick, but in the Justus it was a bit more complicated. But the Justus is always difficult to clean, due to the slide nib adjuster, so I don’t think this complication was the ink’s fault.

Overall, a bit too bright for my tastes but if you want to liven up your day with a work appropriate ink that wouldn’t look out of place in the boardroom, then this could be an option.

Pilot make some of my favourite steel nibs and the Prera is no exception. The Prera is one of Pilot’s more expensive beginner style pens, often retailing at about USD$50 online from US vendors, however, you can usually get them for much cheaper on ebay or through Japanese vendors.

This is a pretty small pen, at only 12 cm long (capped) and 10.7 cm long, uncapped. I can use it for short periods of time unposted, but for anything longer than a quick note, I need to post the pen to use it comfortably. Given the pen is made mostly of plastic, it is very light and posting hasn’t been an issue at all, particularly since I normally use pens unposted.

The Prera ships with a converter, this demonstrator version I am using here came with the con-50, however, my opaque versions came with the con-20 which has a much bigger ink capacity. It also comes with nib options, in a Fine, Medium and “CM” nib which is an untipped stub – Goulet Pens has stated that it is around 1.0mm wide. Japanese nibs run finer, so the medium version I am using here is about a fine on a Jowo or Western style nib.

The nib on this Prera is fantastically smooth and the ink flow is on the drier side of medium. This has been a good thing since the converter capacity is so small (0.6 mL), the ink doesn’t last all that long. Keep in mind, with the agitator in the con-50 converter, I find that the pen rattles a little when the ink volume starts decreasing. Its noticeable, but not irritating (to me), but I thought I would mention it to those who might not be keen on “pen noise”

I really like how you can completely disassemble the nib and feed area of this pen to clean. It makes it so much easier to get every last bit of ink out of this demonstrator.

I really like the nib on this pen and the way it writes. It would be remiss of me not to mention that other Pilot pens exist which sport similar, if not the same, nibs for much less. The Pilot Metropolitan can be found with a similar nib (performance appears to be about the same, aesthetically it is different) for much less (~USD$14.50) and so can the Pilot Kakuno (~USD$13.75; no converter provided). I wouldn’t say build-wise, that the Prera was significantly more impressive than the Metropolitan, although it does seem sturdier than the Kakuno.

For me, I like all three options, but I do prefer the Prera over the Metropolitan and Kakuno, if only marginally. For people who don’t like smaller or lighter pens, this might not be the best choice, but I really love the look of it and the way it writes.

Can you see the faint pink sheen on this ink?

Paper: Tomoe River Paper

Pen: Pilot Justus 95 (SFM)

Uni-ball Jetstream 1.0 Retractable (Bold Point)

I’ll start this post off with a confession; it has been a really long time since I’ve used a ballpoint pen for more than a few words. About 4-5 years. They just seemed no longer exciting when I could use a gel pen, a rollerball or later on a fountain pen.

However, there are occasions where a ballpoint pen is called for. For example, at work, I regularly need to write over printed coloured text boxes, and when this happens, I always reach for a bold Jetstream.

The pen body is comfortable to use and the ink is reliable and smooth – unlike the cheap pens I had to use in high school. The ball in the pen does leave a groove in the line on certain angles, but it doesn’t bother me that much. The only thing I would ask for is for the ink to be darker, but since I don’t use it that often, I’m really not that bothered.

I’ll give this Pen Blog thing a go and see how it turns out!

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