9 ms·

The Japanese seem to make really good writing instruments in general. My daily driver for writing is a Mitsubishi uni-ball eye. Only costs a few bucks and it's

The Japanese seem to make really good writing instruments in general. My daily driver for writing is a Mitsubishi uni-ball eye. Only costs a few bucks and it's miles better than a 10 cent Bic. I'm not some kind of pen snob who knows all about different pens, but I know a good pen when I use one. I've found that it makes my (usually unintelligible) handwriting a lot better too. I guess it's maybe a cultural thing, I've heard that the Japanese still place a lot of emphasis on handwriting letters and notes. Meanwhile there's people in my office who haven't touched a pen in weeks.

Wistar 7y ago
I have a set of Mitsubishi Pencil Hi-Uni 10B to 10H pencils and I love them.
learc83 7y ago
I agree. I use a Kuru Toga pencil that rotates the lead to keep it from becoming wedge shaped. Definitely my favorite pencil of all time.
- galangalalgol 7y ago
  I listed after those for a couple years before getting a few. I found that without realizing it I had already been rotating my pencil between every few strokes and that made them not work so well. I can't seem to break the habit so I have gone back to wood pencils.
komali2 7y ago
Yea, what's up with that, actually? Why are they so good at making pretty much anything over there? Writing utensils: 毛笔 - "maobi," the brush one uses to write calligraphy. Brought to Japan by the Chinese thousand years ago or so, now they make the best Paper. Midori and Mio. Nigh untouchable. The only people that come close are Leuchtturm, IMO. And it's cheap! Fountain Pens. Actually the Taiwanese do well here as well, but nobody can take on the behemoth, Pilot. Cars: Toyota. Honda. Well regarded as the most repairable, built-to-last cars in the world. Mitsubishi, Nissan, Mazda coming out with excellent sports cars. Motorcycles: Suzuki tops the line when it comes to dependability, repairability, durability, and quality. Spend a week pulling apart and putting together an SV650, then do a Ducati Monster, you'll see what I mean (if you can even find the tools to start unbolting shit off the Ducati) Construction equipment: Komatsu, Hitachi. Some prefer Caterpillar but not for me. Extraterrestrial Equipment: Walk through the full-size model of the ISS in the Johnson Space Center, Houston. You've got the Russian model, carved out of solid blocks of aluminum. The American one, which feels like being inside of a tricked out Ford f150, cheap panels and all. Then you step in the Japanese one, an over-engineered masterpiece in interior design. Everything has a little cubby, space, place. So organized, so perfect. How do they do it??? Edit: I'm genuinely trying to think of something I trust some other country to make better than the Japanese and having a hard time. Maybe bicycles - can't beat the Taiwanese with Giant... but then again everyone uses Shimano components. Uh, phones? Samsung I guess? Laptops, I generally go for Lenovo, so there. That's all I can think of.
- hammock 7y ago
  I didn't realize that cars, motorcycles and spaceships were writing utensils!
- drawnwren 7y ago
  Quality is part of Japanese culture. You really see it when you walk around on the streets there. Our grandparents' lamentations of 'things used to last longer and be higher quality' would make no sense to a Japanese person because their culture never underwent the same cheapening that we did. (Assuming our grandparents were being completely honest) In my experience, things in Japan tend to be higher quality, cleaner, and much more expensive. The three things I think of when I think about my time there are the clean streets, the old, clean, and eerily on-time public transportation, and the individually wrapped perfectly shiny apples at the grocery store.
  - asutekku 7y ago
    What do you mean by “you can see it when you walk around the streets in here”? Did you spend all your time in central Tokyo? Because all i see around me when i go for a walk are buildings no one seems to care enough to renovate them and honestly it amazes me. All those amazing products you see that come from japan are usually made in a buildings that look like makeshift houses and are built in the middle of a nowhere. I could never imagine japan being what it is by just from walking around in here.
    - peterwwillis 7y ago
      Homes and condo buildings in Japan aren't supposed to last more than 40 years. It's supposed to keep the national economy in a constant state of development (sort of good) but it also means most people can't make a good long term investment off home ownership (which is bad). Either way, yeah, there's no incentive to renovate, because they won't be up for too long. On top of that, a lot of them need to be refurnished or rebuilt to be quake-proof, but it's not affordable, so they may opt to wait until the next big one brings it down.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
NikolaNovak 7y ago
>there's people in my office who haven't touched a pen in weeks. After I realized in my second year of university that I cannot read my own notes, I switched to the laptop as my primary note-making tool. That's been... almost two decades ago. I'll take a dry marker to architect and brainstorm on whiteboard any day of the week; but I touch pens very very little (and if I have to make notes, I'll do block capitals; I can do cursive of course... I just never do. I had an interesting conversation with a school principal who insisted cursive is a core skill that should never be omitted. I view it as calligraphy - a historically relevant and necessary mechanism that today is a quaint way of expressing your uniqueness and artistic prowess, but certainly not a mandatory aspect of modern living)
- komali2 7y ago
  If I don't take hand-written notes, I don't hear what a lecturer is saying. If I type them, I don't hear it either. I almost never go back to notes. The process of writing them, however, is critical for me. Maybe it's my ADHD, dunno. For what it's worth though, I'm usually taking notes on a surface device of some kind, rather than pen and paper.
  - cgriswald 7y ago
    I need the notes too. I rarely refer back to them but writing them is an art for me. It almost functions as a memory palace of sorts. I’ve done notes on an iPad Pro but I prefer pencil, colored pens, and paper.
  - NikolaNovak 7y ago
    I agree in principle that note-taking can enhance memory and retention; but I've found that today, typing my notes does the trick for me - especially because I use indented/hierarchical lists frequently, and update/re-org them as I go; so they help me build a mental model of material or actions we covered. By the end of note-taking session, my OneNote file will have notes organized in the way which makes sense to me and in which way I want to remember them - whereas hand-written notes would (for me) be inherently more sequential. As yourself therefore, I retain the list of key points or actions far better than if I didn't take those notes - even if I don't refer to them later. (as well, I'm a touch-typist, so I can look at the person or whiteboard/screen while typing, which again I personally couldn't do while hand-writing). So it may be whatever works for any given person - or, whatever people get used to. It'd be curious to see if typed notes would provide same benefit to you after, say, a few months commitment? Or it may be that I switched early enough in life; or, to quote Lady Gaga, maybe I was just born that way :->
iaresee 7y ago
> a Mitsubishi uni-ball eye Uni-balls will forever be my favorite pens. The right amount of flow and resistance. Clear, strong lines that don't bleed and smear. I've tried so many other pens and they just making writing misery. Uni-ball for life.
chadmeister 7y ago
Yesssss! I regret not having brought back more. I can't for the life of me find the same quality uni ball pens anywhere in the US or online. They definitely take handwritten notes far more seriously in Japan. The have Stationary stores everywhere there and they literally just sell writing utensils and paper/notebooks.
- bookofjoe 7y ago
  > I can't for the life of me find the same quality uni ball pens anywhere in the US or online. Here's the mother lode: https://www.jetpens.com/ https://www.jetpens.com/ Reviews: https://www.jetpens.com/reviews https://www.jetpens.com/reviews
tvanantwerp 7y ago
I've taken to Muji pens, 0.38mm. I love the finer point to them--hard to find anything smaller than 0.5mm in the US.
- xellisx 7y ago
  I bought some 0.18s back in the early 00s. Most were too scratchy.
  - kazinator 7y ago
    0.25 to 0.3 tends to be okay. Very handy for writing very small. The thinner traces save ink, too.
- silly_yote 7y ago
  Muji has US stores. And their gel pens I think must be OEM by Zebra. The Zebra Sarasa has a different clip, but the parts are interchangeable, I took one of each apart and made two hybridd.
- wluu 7y ago
  Muji 0.38mm gel pens are my favourite cheap good pens (they're about $1.50 AUD in Australia).
- davemp 7y ago
  I may press too hard, but I've had a few packs of them and ~50% would break on me and start leaking ink like a squid. Great pens otherwise though.
flukus 7y ago
Is it Japanese or Mitsubushi especially? They're pretty much synonymous with high quality work vehicles but very few of the other products they make seem to get exported. I had a great Mitsubishi TV once, but when it had to be replaced they'd disappeared from the market.
polyterative 7y ago
Me too! Have used it for 10 years now. Changed only 3 of them
cy6erlion 7y ago
I think it is because of Zen, most people in Japan don't actively practice Zen anymore but the influence is still there. Think of the tea ceremony, Bonsai trees, sword making etc, everything should be perfect, clean, minimalism that is how one reaches Satori, the Japanese are very self conscious. Same principles of zen applied to the modern world.
varjag 7y ago
Yes, yes, yes! I refuse to use anything except Mitsubishi UB157 for handwriting for years now.
wst_ 7y ago
> I guess it's maybe a cultural thing, I've heard that the Japanese still place a lot of emphasis on handwriting letters and notes. Sorry to be this guy, but, nope. It's quite opposite. Old generation, yes, they do. New generation, especially smartphone generation, are not writing anymore. And to the point that they have problems with handwriting some kanji characters. Most of the stuff is printed, now, or written on the keyboard slash phone. It's just much faster for them. OTOH it's hard to blame them. Kanji characters require much more effort to write properly and there's much more of them to remember than Latin letters. It's definitely cultural, but I think this is something different. Obviously it's generalization and my opinion, but I deeply think there is something to it. Like any other nation I know, Japanese tend to master things they do. I've experienced this first hand. They can perform a single task whole life, improving it, until they become exceptionally good at it. It may seem to be a tedious everyday chore, but through all repetition and improvement they are raising it to the level of art. Often, they even put an additional effort for something that doesn't directly pay off financially but increase esthetics, comfort and overall experience. I love them for that and I hope they'll never change, for the sake of the whole world drowning in a sea of ugly, cheap and minimal effort products.
jseliger 7y ago
I like Pigma Micron pens: https://www.jetpens.com/blog/sakura-pigma-pens-a-comprehensive-guide/pt/932 https://www.jetpens.com/blog/sakura-pigma-pens-a-comprehensi.... Jetpens is a marvelous site if you like pens.

Wistar 7y ago

I have a set of Mitsubishi Pencil Hi-Uni 10B to 10H pencils and I love them.

learc83 7y ago

I agree. I use a Kuru Toga pencil that rotates the lead to keep it from becoming wedge shaped. Definitely my favorite pencil of all time.

galangalalgol 7y ago
I listed after those for a couple years before getting a few. I found that without realizing it I had already been rotating my pencil between every few strokes and that made them not work so well. I can't seem to break the habit so I have gone back to wood pencils.

komali2 7y ago

Yea, what's up with that, actually? Why are they so good at making pretty much anything over there? Writing utensils: 毛笔 - "maobi," the brush one uses to write calligraphy. Brought to Japan by the Chinese thousand years ago or so, now they make the best Paper. Midori and Mio. Nigh untouchable. The only people that come close are Leuchtturm, IMO. And it's cheap! Fountain Pens. Actually the Taiwanese do well here as well, but nobody can take on the behemoth, Pilot. Cars: Toyota. Honda. Well regarded as the most repairable, built-to-last cars in the world. Mitsubishi, Nissan, Mazda coming out with excellent sports cars. Motorcycles: Suzuki tops the line when it comes to dependability, repairability, durability, and quality. Spend a week pulling apart and putting together an SV650, then do a Ducati Monster, you'll see what I mean (if you can even find the tools to start unbolting shit off the Ducati) Construction equipment: Komatsu, Hitachi. Some prefer Caterpillar but not for me. Extraterrestrial Equipment: Walk through the full-size model of the ISS in the Johnson Space Center, Houston. You've got the Russian model, carved out of solid blocks of aluminum. The American one, which feels like being inside of a tricked out Ford f150, cheap panels and all. Then you step in the Japanese one, an over-engineered masterpiece in interior design. Everything has a little cubby, space, place. So organized, so perfect. How do they do it??? Edit: I'm genuinely trying to think of something I trust some other country to make better than the Japanese and having a hard time. Maybe bicycles - can't beat the Taiwanese with Giant... but then again everyone uses Shimano components. Uh, phones? Samsung I guess? Laptops, I generally go for Lenovo, so there. That's all I can think of.

hammock 7y ago
I didn't realize that cars, motorcycles and spaceships were writing utensils!
drawnwren 7y ago
Quality is part of Japanese culture. You really see it when you walk around on the streets there. Our grandparents' lamentations of 'things used to last longer and be higher quality' would make no sense to a Japanese person because their culture never underwent the same cheapening that we did. (Assuming our grandparents were being completely honest) In my experience, things in Japan tend to be higher quality, cleaner, and much more expensive. The three things I think of when I think about my time there are the clean streets, the old, clean, and eerily on-time public transportation, and the individually wrapped perfectly shiny apples at the grocery store.
- asutekku 7y ago
  What do you mean by “you can see it when you walk around the streets in here”? Did you spend all your time in central Tokyo? Because all i see around me when i go for a walk are buildings no one seems to care enough to renovate them and honestly it amazes me. All those amazing products you see that come from japan are usually made in a buildings that look like makeshift houses and are built in the middle of a nowhere. I could never imagine japan being what it is by just from walking around in here.
  - peterwwillis 7y ago
    Homes and condo buildings in Japan aren't supposed to last more than 40 years. It's supposed to keep the national economy in a constant state of development (sort of good) but it also means most people can't make a good long term investment off home ownership (which is bad). Either way, yeah, there's no incentive to renovate, because they won't be up for too long. On top of that, a lot of them need to be refurnished or rebuilt to be quake-proof, but it's not affordable, so they may opt to wait until the next big one brings it down.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

NikolaNovak 7y ago

>there's people in my office who haven't touched a pen in weeks. After I realized in my second year of university that I cannot read my own notes, I switched to the laptop as my primary note-making tool. That's been... almost two decades ago. I'll take a dry marker to architect and brainstorm on whiteboard any day of the week; but I touch pens very very little (and if I have to make notes, I'll do block capitals; I can do cursive of course... I just never do. I had an interesting conversation with a school principal who insisted cursive is a core skill that should never be omitted. I view it as calligraphy - a historically relevant and necessary mechanism that today is a quaint way of expressing your uniqueness and artistic prowess, but certainly not a mandatory aspect of modern living)

komali2 7y ago
If I don't take hand-written notes, I don't hear what a lecturer is saying. If I type them, I don't hear it either. I almost never go back to notes. The process of writing them, however, is critical for me. Maybe it's my ADHD, dunno. For what it's worth though, I'm usually taking notes on a surface device of some kind, rather than pen and paper.
- cgriswald 7y ago
  I need the notes too. I rarely refer back to them but writing them is an art for me. It almost functions as a memory palace of sorts. I’ve done notes on an iPad Pro but I prefer pencil, colored pens, and paper.
- NikolaNovak 7y ago
  I agree in principle that note-taking can enhance memory and retention; but I've found that today, typing my notes does the trick for me - especially because I use indented/hierarchical lists frequently, and update/re-org them as I go; so they help me build a mental model of material or actions we covered. By the end of note-taking session, my OneNote file will have notes organized in the way which makes sense to me and in which way I want to remember them - whereas hand-written notes would (for me) be inherently more sequential. As yourself therefore, I retain the list of key points or actions far better than if I didn't take those notes - even if I don't refer to them later. (as well, I'm a touch-typist, so I can look at the person or whiteboard/screen while typing, which again I personally couldn't do while hand-writing). So it may be whatever works for any given person - or, whatever people get used to. It'd be curious to see if typed notes would provide same benefit to you after, say, a few months commitment? Or it may be that I switched early enough in life; or, to quote Lady Gaga, maybe I was just born that way :->

iaresee 7y ago

> a Mitsubishi uni-ball eye Uni-balls will forever be my favorite pens. The right amount of flow and resistance. Clear, strong lines that don't bleed and smear. I've tried so many other pens and they just making writing misery. Uni-ball for life.

chadmeister 7y ago

Yesssss! I regret not having brought back more. I can't for the life of me find the same quality uni ball pens anywhere in the US or online. They definitely take handwritten notes far more seriously in Japan. The have Stationary stores everywhere there and they literally just sell writing utensils and paper/notebooks.

bookofjoe 7y ago
> I can't for the life of me find the same quality uni ball pens anywhere in the US or online. Here's the mother lode: https://www.jetpens.com/ https://www.jetpens.com/ Reviews: https://www.jetpens.com/reviews https://www.jetpens.com/reviews

tvanantwerp 7y ago

I've taken to Muji pens, 0.38mm. I love the finer point to them--hard to find anything smaller than 0.5mm in the US.

xellisx 7y ago
I bought some 0.18s back in the early 00s. Most were too scratchy.
- kazinator 7y ago
  0.25 to 0.3 tends to be okay. Very handy for writing very small. The thinner traces save ink, too.
silly_yote 7y ago
Muji has US stores. And their gel pens I think must be OEM by Zebra. The Zebra Sarasa has a different clip, but the parts are interchangeable, I took one of each apart and made two hybridd.
wluu 7y ago
Muji 0.38mm gel pens are my favourite cheap good pens (they're about $1.50 AUD in Australia).
davemp 7y ago
I may press too hard, but I've had a few packs of them and ~50% would break on me and start leaking ink like a squid. Great pens otherwise though.

flukus 7y ago

Is it Japanese or Mitsubushi especially? They're pretty much synonymous with high quality work vehicles but very few of the other products they make seem to get exported. I had a great Mitsubishi TV once, but when it had to be replaced they'd disappeared from the market.

polyterative 7y ago

Me too! Have used it for 10 years now. Changed only 3 of them

cy6erlion 7y ago

I think it is because of Zen, most people in Japan don't actively practice Zen anymore but the influence is still there. Think of the tea ceremony, Bonsai trees, sword making etc, everything should be perfect, clean, minimalism that is how one reaches Satori, the Japanese are very self conscious. Same principles of zen applied to the modern world.

varjag 7y ago

Yes, yes, yes! I refuse to use anything except Mitsubishi UB157 for handwriting for years now.

wst_ 7y ago

> I guess it's maybe a cultural thing, I've heard that the Japanese still place a lot of emphasis on handwriting letters and notes. Sorry to be this guy, but, nope. It's quite opposite. Old generation, yes, they do. New generation, especially smartphone generation, are not writing anymore. And to the point that they have problems with handwriting some kanji characters. Most of the stuff is printed, now, or written on the keyboard slash phone. It's just much faster for them. OTOH it's hard to blame them. Kanji characters require much more effort to write properly and there's much more of them to remember than Latin letters. It's definitely cultural, but I think this is something different. Obviously it's generalization and my opinion, but I deeply think there is something to it. Like any other nation I know, Japanese tend to master things they do. I've experienced this first hand. They can perform a single task whole life, improving it, until they become exceptionally good at it. It may seem to be a tedious everyday chore, but through all repetition and improvement they are raising it to the level of art. Often, they even put an additional effort for something that doesn't directly pay off financially but increase esthetics, comfort and overall experience. I love them for that and I hope they'll never change, for the sake of the whole world drowning in a sea of ugly, cheap and minimal effort products.

jseliger 7y ago

I like Pigma Micron pens: https://www.jetpens.com/blog/sakura-pigma-pens-a-comprehensive-guide/pt/932 https://www.jetpens.com/blog/sakura-pigma-pens-a-comprehensi.... Jetpens is a marvelous site if you like pens.