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I've just purchased a bottle of Sailor Jentle Ink called "Doyou" which means mid-summer in Japanese. It's one of the eight inks of their "Colours of Four Seasons" line. Many people like Oku-yama and Yama-dori of this line, and this Doyou one is relatively rare and I was not able to find many reviews of it. I want a darker colour but not totally (boring) black, so I went for Doyou. This is my first review (here or anywhere). I hope I've done it right. It comes with a 50ml bottle with a "reservoir": flip the bottle upside-down before inking the pen and the ink will stay in a small "cone" which makes it easier to fill. When written with a finer nib, Doyou is a dark brown colour which could be mistaken as black without side-by-side comparison with a black ink. But if you look carefully you'll see it's a warm brown with a hint of red. This may refer to the colour of land in a hot summer day I guess? I think it's an understated colour suitable for work if you don't want to use a boring black. It dries fairly fast, no feathering or bleedthrough on Rhodia paper. With fine nibs there is virtually no shading though. It's a rather wet ink in my Pilot VP. The swabs show a less darker colour with a tiny bit shading. In the smear test I ran a wet finger across it twice. It leaves a red-brownish trace and you can still see the lines very clearly. The drip test shows that it has quite a decent waterproofness. All in all I think I quite like this ink. I don't have a black ink at hand for comparison, so I used the darkest (the least bright) colour available to me, which is R&K Salix, for a comparison. I have also a few words in R&K Scabiosa in my "ink journal" so I took a picture of it and put it side by side with Doyou as a comparison. Scabiosa has more of a purple hint to it. This is my first review and any suggestion or advice is welcomed! Some close-ups:

So it's December, and I felt like a nice warm mug of J. Herbin Cacao Du Bresil in the snow. This was the first ink that I ever bought a second bottle in the same color range - Rohrer & Klingner's Sepia - and felt completely justified as although they are close each has its own unique qualities (most interestingly, one is warm, one is cool!). . . . . then on "Black Friday" = "Ink Discount Day" my love for greenish browns (I think I have nearly five million of these at this point) provoked me to order (cheap, I promise!) both Rikyu Cha and Yama Guri (and Stipula Verde Muschiato, but that is still on back order!). Oh, and I have Doyou, which is more of a Brown Black than Taupe, but still - time for a "Taupe Off"! . . . . and then that very afternoon what does Santa bring but my other "Discount Day" bargain, a Birmingham Pens Model A (Secretariat finish, Knox 1.5mm stub, really wet writer yummy!) with a two "free" bottles of ink including Winky's Hamburgers Root Beer which makes Taupe #5!! Here's some scans: