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Japan's Paper Culture
- dhruval 5y agoPens aren't my thing, but I am impressed with the quality of the article considering its part of a commercial website. Compared to the low quality content marketing most companies put out this was a breath of fresh air.
- hstaab 5y agoI often want to reteach myself handwriting to be able to write like this. Has anyone here had success in doing this? How did you go about it?
- ink_13 5y agoIt just takes dedicated and deliberate practise. There's no secret method I'm afraid. Oh, except for "go slow".
- Enginerrrd 5y agoOne tip is that you need to train your eye as much as you train your hand. First redo your grip, it probably sucks. Then relearn the alphabet using that grip to the standard of your eye. Then relearn to see the flaws in your handwriting in increasingly subtle ways and keep training to eliminate those flaws up to the standard of your eye.
- Jtsummers 5y agoI massively improved my handwriting with near daily practice for a few months. Just the alphabet and various words (stuck with print, not script, so limited need to practice hard letter sequences). Pretty much just filled legal pads with letters and some words until my handwriting was to a level I was happy with.
- pwr-electronics 5y agoI have, using Handwriting Repair by Briem. It was less work than I expected, and my handwriting looks pretty cool now. Even if you don't adopt the italic style advocated by the book, the other advice is still generally useful. I printed out the tracing page and did that a few times a day for a few days to get familiar with it. After that, it took a while, but it eventually became natural to write that way. The italic style helps with writing fast. https://sites.google.com/view/briem/free-books/handwriting-repair https://sites.google.com/view/briem/free-books/handwriting-r...
- egypturnash 5y agoLook for penmanship manuals, there are many out there online. They will be full of instructions and exercises. Calligraphy manuals may be interesting too but that is somewhat more decorative.
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- Barrin92 5y agoI took a calligraphy course when I was in uni. Interestingly enough by a Japanese woman. City I went to school in also has one of the largest Japanese communities in Europe and a even a few Japanese crafts/pens/office shops. Article definitely rings true. If you have a university close by that's I think a decent place to start.
- bluedino 5y agoI can do it, but it all goes to shit when I need to write fast
- panda88888 5y agoIt’s like playing a piano. Start with slow tempo and get everything right. Then gradually speed up while maintaining the quality. And at a certain point it is not possible to write faster without changing the shapes of letters to be more cursive like, and that is ok.
- alexjm 5y agoI used the book "The Italic Way to Beautiful Handwriting" by Fred Eager. The italic method, in contrast to printing or cursive, seemed to have enough connected letters to write quickly, but without insisting on connecting everything like cursive, even when it made writing awkward. I also followed some of the movement drills from a manual for the Palmer method, a cursive pre-typewriter "business" handwriting style from the early 1900s that was meant to be written quickly and legibly all day, but which some folks think looks too old-fashioned today.
- JohnBooty 5y agoGrowing up, I had a friend with a Japanese parent. She had supernaturally neat handwriting, produced with various impossibly cute and meticulous-looking Japanese pens and stationary over the years. I felt like some kind of clumsy, nasty barbarian in comparison. Japan is, of course, just a place. The people there are ordinary humans. Fetishizing a particular culture is both cringeworthy and genuinely harmful. Their country and society have plenty of problems, just like any other. There is nothing magical about Japan or any other place. However. If all that remains of their civilization in 10,000 years is a curiously well-preserved Japanese stationary store, perhaps buried Pompei-style and frozen in time... future historians may conclude otherwise.
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- artdigital 5y agoThere are still places here that require you to submit a handwritten resume for that matter
- eru 5y agoI wonder if there are resume ghostwriters you can hire for that? I imagine you'd send them the text and a sample of your handwriting, and they'd produce a neatened up version that's close enough to your handwriting that someone could believe you'd produced it with enough care. (Cheaper versions would just give you a generic neat hand, without customising it to your own handwriting.)
- Aeolun 5y agoDon’t forget you need to submit a new one for every place you apply. It does show a certain kind of dedication I suppose.
- sombremesa 5y ago
- xt00 5y agoIf you go to Japan, check out a place called Tokyu Hands.. tons of paper notebooks, pens, pencils, pencil organizer pouches, tons of awesome stuff..
- execat 5y agoTokyu Hands is all over SG too.
- mesh 5y agoAlso Ito-Ya https://www.ito-ya.co.jp/lang/en/index.html https://www.ito-ya.co.jp/lang/en/index.html
- rococode 5y agoItoya is amazing, it's like a wonderland of stationery! I also highly recommend kakimori, which builds custom notebooks that you can select all the parts for (binding, paper, cover, etc.). Really memorable experience, and it's in a quieter residential part of the city (but still fairly convenient/central) that feels very different from the usual tourist spots.
- dreamcompiler 5y agoItoya is Disneyland for people who love office supplies. I have never found such a store in the US. Itoya is similar to Staples in the same way a Tesla is similar to a garbage truck.
- Zezima 5y agoThis was 8 floors of heaven last year. Loved it
- barlog 5y agoLast week. Tokyu Hands was acquired by a major DIY store. don't worry, Business will continue.
- bmitc 5y agoMuji has several stores in the U.S. and ships within the U.S., and they have really good paper, notebooks, and pens.
- bluedino 5y agoI have no affiliation with jetpens - but if you are into pens at all, buy one of their sampler packs. It's a great way to try out different styles of pens that you won't find at Staples or Walgreens (or the office supply closet).
- jedimastert 5y agoI also have no affiliation with jetpens, but they're an incredible little company. They also do a TON of writing like the article linked.
- panda88888 5y ago+1 for jet pens. No affiliation, just happy customer who’ve spent more than should have.
- cbfrench 5y agoBeen spending (too much?) money there for years. Wonderful outfit.
- JohnBooty 5y agopens that you won't find at Staples or Walgreens (or the office supply closet) You'll still have to hit up the office supply closet or one of those other places for "decoy pens." You leave the decoy pens in a cup on top of your desk, while you keep the good stuff inside a drawer. That way your officemates and/or partner and/or housemates borrow (steal) the decoy pens and not the good stuff.
- maeln 5y agoThis bring back memory of middle school. I grew up in one of the poorest overseas territory of France, and if you left anything on your table while the teacher was calling you to the board, you had a 50/50% chance of having them stolen before you came back to your seat. Therefore, we all got into the habit of picking our pencil case with us when we went to the board. Then I moved back to metropolitan France and all the teacher and kids where looking at me like an alien when I was picking all my stuff up before coming to the board ...
- authed 5y ago
- dang 5y agoYour account is rate limited. We rate limit accounts when they have a habit of breaking the site guidelines, getting involved in flamewars, or posting a lot of low-quality comments. You have a long history of doing that on HN, unfortunately. And are still doing it, unfortunately. Rate limits apply to all posts, both comments and submissions. That's the technical answer to your question. We're happy to remove rate limits when people give us reason to believe that they'll use the site as intended in the future, but unfortunately, when I skim your recent posts, I see reasons to believe the opposite. I realize the throttling is annoying, and am sorry about that, but it's one of the few crude software-based techniques we have to try to dampen the degeneration of this place; something to which you've unfortunately contributed more than your share. If you would review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, take the intended spirit of the site to heart, and build up a track record of abiding by the site guidelines, we'd be delighted to take the rate limit off your account.
- romwell 5y agoI've been ordering from Jet Pens for about a decade now. Best selection of Japanese fountain pens, fantastic notebooks, always a great experience. Solid article, and glad to see them on the front page of HN.
- bamboozled 5y agoIt's fun, until you live there, and find yourself forever filling out tens of useless forms and workout that pretty much everything requires a form, whether or not it makes sense. Don't get me wrong, I think the art work, Kanji and calligraphy is awesome, there are many amazing things about the 'paper culture' but, there are many drawbacks, especially in 2021 when the rest of the world has gone digital in so many areas.
- buttercakes 5y agoPrint out form. Fill out form. Bring it to old man in an office to stamp form. Scan form. Email form.
- bamboozled 5y agoDisappointed you forgot the faxing.
- davgoldin 5y agoI'd put cleaning the mailbox in second place behind filling forms. They get filled up daily with flyers and paper ads of all kinds. It's so bad that most buildings have a dedicated trash can, just for these. Right next to the mailbox area.
- moogleii 5y agoTo be fair, my last apartment in NYC was like that. Convenient trashcan right in the mailbox room. Though I suppose my mailbox didn't literally get filled daily. If that's the case in Japan, that's pretty bad.
- bmitc 5y agoThis drives me crazy. Greater than 90% of our mail is junk mail and goes straight into the recycling bin. I was watching some recycling process videos the other day, and when it came to bailing up the sorted paper, it looked like it was basically all junk mailers. We literally have systems that supply time and money to design the mailers, supply ink and paper and probably some plastic to make them, mail them, pass them around in the mail system, deliver them, then they're promptly thrown away or recycled, then they're carted off to be processed, and then the mailers eventually end up in landfills or partly recycled. It's insane. It's a closed system that does literally nothing but expend resources and output emissions. I wish the government would make it illegal to mail advertising mailers. But then the USPS, which has had funding purposely cut by those who want their privately held investments to win out in the postal game or just hate anything that is available for everyone, probably relies on a lot of the revenue that comes from those mailers. So it continues. I've found it's basically impossible to get rid of receiving them.
- spyrefused 5y agoI have been using Midori MD notebooks for quite some time, I really like their format and paper. I recently purchased a pack containing a Kunisawa notebook, it's so nice and well made that I'm sad to start writing in it, I'm waiting to start a project or idea for something interesting enough to release it. That said I also think that there are many things coming from Japan that are incredibly overpriced just for the fact of coming from there, like stationery and clothes, the prices they reach when they arrive in Europe are sometimes even in bad taste, especially if you compare them with many local products that are equal or better and worth 1/3 of the price.
- Youden 5y ago> the prices they reach when they arrive in Europe are sometimes even in bad taste You can always import products yourself using a shipping forwarder like Tenso [0] or a purchase assistance service like Buyee [1]. [0]: https://www.tenso.com/en https://www.tenso.com/en [1]: https://buyee.jp/ https://buyee.jp/
- spyrefused 5y agoI'll take a look at it, thanks!
- m4rtink 5y agoUsed both multiple times - always worked fine, can recommend. :-)
- davidsawyer 5y agoRelevant 99pi: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/hanko/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/hanko/
- quartesixte 5y agoThe first on the list, the Kokuyo Campus notebook, is a favorite in Japanese schools everywhere, IF ONLY because it has the words “CAMPUS” emblazoned across the cover. That being said, it’s a really good notebook.
- haroldship 5y agoThis article discusses an interesting topic and is written in an engaging style. Nice find!
- sheppard 5y agoFor a peek behind the scenes at JetPens (with a slightly algorithmic bent): https://youtu.be/1Bi2Xys-ces https://youtu.be/1Bi2Xys-ces Disclaimer: I work there.
- wrp 5y agoI have followed JetPens since they started in someone's dorm room. Just how many people work there now?
- bitxbitxbitcoin 5y agoAlso curious!
- sheppard 5y agoWe have about 50 people. An interesting tidbit is that some of the picking processes described in the video I linked to above were implemented only recently as COVID-19 simultaneously applied upward pressure on order volume (people shopping online more) and downward pressure on fulfillment capacity (warehouse worker density restrictions). We literally had to stop taking orders for a short while to keep the backlog of orders reasonable. It was gratifying to apply things we learned from computer science and industrial engineering together to help us keep up with demand.
- yoz-y 5y agoI always loved the look of notebooks in pen and paper ads. Neat text here, nice drawing there… however, does anybody actually take notes like this? My notes always look like trash, and back in school it was the same for everyone. It almost looks like if you want to take notes this way you have to plan ahead to be sure to have space?
- cpach 5y agoMy notes look kinda like that. My drawing and hand-writing is not stellar, but hey, at least I can read it myself. Not sure why you feel the need to plan ahead…? Just write and draw :)
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoDoes your living room look like the advertisement photos at Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn, or any other furniture store? I’m guessing not. This stuff is staged. Like notebooks advertisements.
- rowanG077 5y agoI once had a fellow physics student show me his notes about some topic. It look like good himself dictated the formulas and placements. My and most of my friends notes like complete trash. But there are some weird people that really can take exceptional notes.
- srazzaque 5y agoReading this makes me yearn for paper/fountain again! But I think the convenience of Rocketbook scanning plus reusability has me hooked. At least for now. I recently found myself wanting to source some Japanese notebooks en-masse, as I prefer handwritten notes for meetings and general "thinking" work. I continually run out of notebooks at the worst possible times. Instead, I ended up buying a Rocketbook. I thought I'd try it out, it wasn't a huge outlay (compared to, for example, ReMarkable). I've gone through the notebook quite a few times now, works quite well. Rocketbooks definitely aren't perfect. The tactility is nowhere near that of fountain/paper. You must use Pilot Frixion pens. And you can only buy frixion pen inks in their insanely small and wasteful plastic cartridges (you cannot just buy a bottle of the ink, as far as I'm aware). I do sometimes wonder if it is better to fill up my recycle bin with paper, or fill up my garbage can with frixion cartridges. But, I'm still not sure I'll go back to standard pen and paper any time soon for my daily notetaking. Slightly off-topic but I'd be curious if any of you are Rocketbook "expats" or converts. Edit: spelling, plus further thought on wastefulness.
- beermonster 5y agoI should really buy something from jet pens. Not sure how how expensive they are for non-US international orders but I’ll have to check. It could potentially add quite a mark-up to a cheaper item such as the sampler packs someone else mentioned. But those packs look GREAT. You should check out the rest of their posts/articles. I’ve ended up on them before when trying to find out the difference in the types of inks and types of pens. I have always been really impressed by the quality of their articles. Really want to give them some cash so will wander over there in a bit. Sadly, my writing has got worse and worse since my life has become more and more digital. I should really have a goal for 2022 to be able to write legibly once again. I can’t even read my own hand writing any more - it must just be the lack of practice and it’s very sad as people used to comment on how beautiful it was (decades ago). Now it looks like a Doctor’s prescription order!
- DavidGetchel 5y agoI just bought some things from them. Great experience! Not sure what international shipping is though, but give them a shot.
- pryelluw 5y ago$50 order here. Good damn marketing.
- prepend 5y agoI buy my pens from them. They have a very good selection and are also cheaper than Amazon even when you factor in shipping to the US. I like the juice up .3mm gel pens that write as well as a ball point but with a much finer point and ink that lasts for months.
- post_break 5y agoI have some Hi-Tec-C pens I got from them in 2009 still on my desk right now. The FOMO is real with their products even if I hardly write.
- willis936 5y agoI did some research into pens and my preferences 10 years ago. I settled on the Zebra Sharbo X LT3 from jet pens. I've gone through about 5. The matte paint gets worn smooth and chips to the brass underneath, the coating on the stainless steel pocket clip starts to come off and irritates my skin, and occasionally the the plastic mechanism on the inside melts because it goes through a clothes drier. I love it. I flip and write with it every day. I got through undergrad and grad with it. Unfortunately, it does not come in orange anymore. I use 0.5 mm graphite, 0.7 mm blue ballpoint (most uses), and 1.0 mm black ballpoint. I've considered red ink instead of blue for a long time, but I'm not a teacher or accountant.
- OtomotO 5y agoPaper is made from (once) living organisms. It should be treated as such and not taken for granted.
- mas-ev 5y agoMidori MD Notebook - A6 Grid Paper, Pilot FriXion Ball Slim Biz Gel Pen - 0.38 mm, and sticky notes helped me organize my life the last two years. I never knew an eraseable pen could be so good. Midori paper is on another level. I love jetpens. I'm trying out the Hobonichi Techo Weeks as a 2022 journal for more structure. But I'll always have a Midori MD for free flowing thoughts or sketches. They even have an interesting video on how they organize and pack orders. https://youtu.be/1Bi2Xys-ces https://youtu.be/1Bi2Xys-ces
- zepearl 5y agoAbout "FriXion" I love that feature to be able to erase the ink, and while scrolling just now Jetpens' site I came across this remark: > ...FriXion ink reappears if exposed to temperatures below 14F (-10C), like if it is placed in a freezer I just tried that out by putting a scrap of paper into the freezer, it worked immediately! Funny & fascinating... :D
- myle 5y agoI understand the feeling of nostalgia in this thread, but for the actual handwriting and its flexibility I would highly recommend a ePaper tablet like remarkable.
- thisoneistheone 5y ago
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- DocTomoe 5y agoI would love to get some actual real-world experience stories about the remarkable - when the Apple Pencil came out, I thought it would replace my pen and paper approach, and I invested in the platform (2018 iPad, Pencil, Goodnotes) - but ultimately was disappointed because the writing felt ackward and "fake" on a glass surface. Because of this experience, I am wary of investing in a new toy with little usage reports which may follow the way of the Pencil, which now gathers dust in a cabinet until finally being put into the refuse pile...
- brennen 5y agoThe reMarkable is a very impressive piece of hardware with unfortunately bad software and a business model that looks to be deteriorating (see recent moves to subscription services, etc.). In physical/tactile terms, it's a really impressive writing experience, but I've found the utility of that so constrained by the absence of indexing and navigation features that I don't use it for much besides occasional drawings. It turns out that navigating a physical notebook works in ways that flipping through electronic pages can't keep up with without a lot of work on the interface. As an e-reader, recent updates to the rendering have made it usable, though there are still sometimes hassles with display and getting documents onto the device. It's theoretically great to be able to annotate PDFs, but in practice not being able to easily navigate the annotations later makes it substantially worse than writing notes in the margins of a paper book. I'm sure a lot of this can be improved with 3rd-party hacks, but it isn't designed as a platform and it feels only grudgingly open to modification, which seems like a huge missed opportunity. (Not to mention being yet another product built on open code that doesn't return the favor.) Being able to SSH to the device and poke around the filesystem is cool, but it mostly feels like a glimpse into how much more utility the whole thing could offer. I'll use mine as long as it works, but I'm unlikely to buy another one and I can't in good faith recommend it for most users. I do know several folks who are happy with the narrow range of things it's good at, which is why I bought it in the first place. Personally, I'm placing my hopes for a more useful-to-me e-ink future on devices like the PineNote.
- dan-robertson 5y agoFor a slightly contrarian opinion: I just use printer-paper (for a laser printer). It works fine with ballpoint or fountain pens (some notebook papers don’t work well with fountain pens and people think they need special expensive paper). Obviously it doesn’t come in a neat book. I just used plastic document sleeves for the first level of organisation (one could then view more than two pages at once too) and box files for the second, though it wasn’t very necessary. I don’t have much to write and record these days. I currently use paper for free-form drawings or diagrams for work as photographing a paper drawing is the most efficient process I currently have for getting such diagrams into emails/our wiki.
- kixiQu 5y agoI also use laser paper for my fountain pen scratch stuff! The premium laser stuff has a nice enough surface, but it's quite thick/heavy once you get multiple sheets together. The benefit for the special expensive paper is that you can have the same nice usable writing surface, but many, many, many more sheets in something thin and light enough to carry around (as in a notebook) or mail (as in letter paper). One big difference between Japanese and non-Asian paper cultures that I've found is that there's much less loyalty in Japan to the [brick-like codex aesthetic], so there's more design consideration placed into keeping things convenient to carry around -- textbooks split into thin volumes, notebooks tending toward copybook length even when of luxurious quality, etc. (Also may have something to do with diff. writing system facilitating info density on pages, etc. but that would need more expertise to weigh in on) If you're working at a desk, all that doesn't matter, and it sounds like you have a great system for your setup. [brick-like codex aesthetic]: https://www.nerdforge.academy/fantasy-bookbinding-course https://www.nerdforge.academy/fantasy-bookbinding-course , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World#/media/File:Great_Books.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_Wor...
- woolion 5y agoI'm a big fan of Feng Zhu, and he often recalls asking his class "how many of you have a Moleskine notebook? Almost all raise hands. How many of you have filled them? And almost nobody raise their hands. So, just take a stack of printer paper, staple it, and that will be your notebook". With great paper comes great expectations, and that prevents you from using it. I was gifted a Moleskine notebook, tried to make a drawing on one page, it was pretty bad, and I never opened it again. I got the cheapest work notebook, and I actually filled it with great city drawings during my travels, interspersed with some ideas about probabilistic descriptive complexity and other stuff I was working on.
- ThePhysicist 5y agoThey also manufacture some great fountain pens. I recently got a Pilot Capless (Vanishing Point) and really like it after writing on Lamy pens for years.
- samatman 5y agoMy black Pilot Vanishing Point, from Itoya in Ginza, is the crown of my collection. Great story and fantastic pen, although for sentiment it can't compare to the Montblanc my father gave me for matriculating from university. Fun timing to run into this article, I have the pen and fresh ink sitting next to the converter as a nice project to work on during the intercalary week.
- wrp 5y agoJetPens is by far the most useful web site for learning about Japanese stationery. I especially appreciate the customer reviews, where you sometimes get more critical analysis than you would see in the official description. It's worth also checking other sellers like www.tokyopenshop.com and jstationery.com, especially for older products or things that JetPens has run out of. Shipping out of the USA can be pretty expensive. For larger and more popular items, there are sellers operating from Japan that sell through Amazon and manage to keep shipping charges more modest.
- taubek 5y agoDoes anyone have experience with alcohol based markers? Which paper would you recommend for such markers?
- packetlost 5y agoFor anyone who prefers mechanical pencils over pens (like myself), I have been extremely happy with the pairing of a Zebra M-701 and Uni Nano Dia HB 0.7mm on Leuchtturm1917 or Moleskine paper.
- gganley 5y agoCould I interest you in a Rotring 600? Keep in mind I haven't used either of those you listed. review: https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2012/3/5/rotring-600-drafting-pencil-review.html https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2012/3/5/rotring-600-drafting... jet pens: https://www.jetpens.com/Rotring-600-Drafting-Pencils/ct/1109 https://www.jetpens.com/Rotring-600-Drafting-Pencils/ct/1109
- packetlost 5y agoI personally prefer a heftier, thicker pencil as the skinnier ones make my hands cramp up a little after a lot of writing (something . I do have some drafting pencils from a different brand (nothing spectacular) but they're mostly relegated to my art supplies drawer.
- satyrnein 5y agoTangentially related, with pandemic WFH, have we finally achieved the "paperless office"?
- fnord77 5y agoI have an itoya oasis notebook that I adore. Paper feels lux and has the right amount of tooth and it magically lays flat despite having a cloth binding. Got it at that Japanese paper/pen shop on Santana Row in san jose. https://itoya.com/products/notebooks-journals/profolio-oasis-notebook/ https://itoya.com/products/notebooks-journals/profolio-oasis... also have a kyokuto side-bound wire notebook that has held up like a champ. The wire doesn't get mangled from jamming it into my backpack like some POS mead notebook would. Got it at the japanese paper store in japantown sf https://kencrooker.com/review-kyokuto/ https://kencrooker.com/review-kyokuto/ Still I think from now on I'm going to stick with the magic lay-flat cloth bound. one curious statement from the article: > Despite Japan’s international reputation for using futuristic technology... maybe in the 1980s? As late as a few years ago, it was rare for a hotel in japan to have wifi. They're lagging in tech now in several industries.
- olah_1 5y ago> YAMAMOTO PAPER told us that they believe paper selection will be more limited in the near future as manufacturing becomes more streamlined and people move to digital tools. Their hope is that people will get to know Japanese paper culture as it is now before it permanently changes. Do Japanese paper companies make much use of recycled paper?
- GuB-42 5y agoStationary from Japan is really something else. Notebooks, pens, scissors, etc... They feel great, look great. Even the cheap stuff you get from convenience stores is nice. Many innovative pens and art supply you can find in the west came from Japan too.
- zuj 5y ago99percentinvisible did a podcast on the culture of hanko and how it changed during the pandemic. It is pretty interesting. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/hanko/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/hanko/