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Giving away: A near-full bottle of Sailor Jentle Blue, the old wide-mouth style with inkwell insert, and one 8.25 by 5.75 Rhodia grid pad with one or two pages missing. Someone will enjoy having these two old pals! Winner will defray the cost of shipping, to be calculated later. CONUS only. Winner chosen at random. Good luck!

So my used Pilot Custom 74 EF arrived this afternoon. I flushed it with water and then inked it up with Sailor Manyo Haha and I ended up with a pen that was just having hard starts and a lot of skipping. I'm a relatively slow writer and it couldn't keep up with me. Unlike my previous thread where I was asking if all Pilot pens just took time to get the nib wet, and it was pointed out that my putting ink directly into the converter with a syringe an then plugging that in wasn't optimal, with this pen, I took the plunge (if you'll pardon the pun), and dipped the pen directly into the ink sample via and pumped up the ink using the CON-70. The initial touch to paper was nice, but after that it was just running dry. I was very disappointed by all of this. After reading/watching that Kon-Peki is a good "fixes everything ink", I cleaned out the pen and then loaded it up with Kon-Peki. As advertised, all the problems went away and the pen is a joy to write with. Trying to do a post analysis now and reading some of the lower rating reviews for Manyo Haha at Goulet Pens, I found a couple of comments noting how dry the ink was. Admittedly, that is a pretty small sample. Anybody else had good or bad experiences with this combo of an Japanese EF nib + Manyo Haha?

The blue Sailor ink I see is pigmented and I don't want to mess up the pen, either, but the ion-plating needs non-acidic ink, as I understand it. I'm currently a Diamine fan, but I guess that changes now. I am eyeing Pilot asa-gao and J. Herbin's few non-shimmering blues. Am I being overcautious or too reckless by going off-brand? This pen was a big purchase for me on my income and I want to treat it right and make it last. Thanks! Scott

A little while back I picked up one of these little Sailor Shikiori Pro Gears. For the first month or so I had it I was syringe filling the cartridge it came with with different inks to see how they complemented the nib. But eventually I figured that since I finally had a pen that takes the stock cartridges of my favorite ink line—the Sailor nanopigments—I’d just get a box of Souboku cartridges and commit to using those for awhile. Shortly thereafter the pen started writing really dryly. It would skip or put down faint lines, and no amount of shaking, shimming, or rinsing seemed to resolve the problem. Figuring there must’ve been some malign chemical reaction between the Souboku and the residue of one of the previous inks I’d had in there, I put the disassembled pieces in a cup of water with a few drops of dish detergent and left it soaking on a high shelf while I went out of town for a few days to visit family. When I returned to New York, I found that the nib was shedding into the water a gunky substance that I, an incorrigible and reckless ink-mixer, had never seen before, and that the cup now had a weird earthy smell. I figured my roommate had thought the cup was trash, thrown it in the garbage alongside some gnarly food scraps, realized her mistake, and then put it all back on the shelf hoping I wouldn’t notice. (She aggressively denied my suspicions, but as Marx used to say, "De omnibus dubitandum…”). So anyway, I washed the hell out of it (i.e. the pen components) under the tap with some anti-bacterial dish detergent, put it all back together, stuck in a new Souboku cartridge, and found that it performed brilliantly—this pen had never written so well. …Until a few days later when I not only noticed that it had begun to skip and flow dryly again, but that the funky smell had returned. Then today I took it out, held it up under the light, and, well, see for yourself: Now, I’m no mycologist, and I assume there are other ways this pen could have been infected with mold, but since none of the other pens I fill with ill-advised ink concoctions and carry around this dirty city evince the slightest hint of fungus, it seems the Sailor Souboku cartridges might be culprit. But my impression was that moldy ink results from ink (usually bottled) being exposed to contaminants in the environment after it’s been opened. Is it possible live spores from the factory have survived for years in these sealed cartridges? Or that the spores came from the box/packaging and were on the cartridge’s exterior? In case it matters, this batch appears to be from 2018:

Although this pen is lovely, it's challenging -- it's incredibly hard to turn the knob for the piston. I only have one hand, so I can turn the knob if I have the pen on its side and steady the barrel that way, then grip the knob with a rubber glove, but of course you can't fill a pen on its side. So I merely dipped the nib in the ink. Hopefully when my husband comes home he'll have better luck drawing up ink.

Title sums it up, but for more info I'm looking to start collecting these after having completed Kingdom Note, Pen-and-Message, SanKoDo, lines and most of Bung-Box's lines (still waiting on a couple seasonal inks to show up... looking at you Ebisgold)

I have two bottles of Sailor Jentle Four Seasons and I was just wondering why these inks have such a strong smell. Anyone know? I absolutely love the inks, as they're super wet, saturated, and lubricated--but the smell is really funky. I can even smell the ink on the paper after its dried....

I stumbled upon this fortuitously on Rakuten. Since i don't read japanese i can't tell il they are LE for Youstyle or not. This is good and bad news. It depends.

Pen & Message: Syuurushi (Red Urushi) Pen & Message is a stationary store based in Kobe, Japan. They sell some highly sought after inks including the holy grail Cigar; a colour-shifting, sheening ink like no other (apart from Sailor’s Four Seasons Rikkyu-Cha that you can purchase very easily and for a fraction of the price). Despite the recent reissue of Rikkyu-Cha, Cigar is still regarded as the No.1 ink by many- the ink of all inks. Plus since Cigar comes from Pen & Message it you get it in the cool diamond shape bottle- perfect for those with humoungous nibbed- fountain pens. Because of the worldwide popularity of Pen & Message inks, you cannot purchase them directly on-line unless you live in Japan. So if you cannot buy them in person at their store you would have to use a forwarding service such as White Rabbit Express, which is how I got them. Be aware they are currently limiting ink purchases to 1 colour/person. I bought 1 each of the 8 piece set as follows; Cigar (Brown) Old Burgundy (Burgundy) Quadrifoglio (Green) Vintage Denim (Blue) Saku (Blue) Sanyasou (purple) Suyuurushi (red urushi) Fuyugare (grey)Here is a pic of the Pen & Message inks; *Picture taken from their website Three of the inks were made in collaboration with Writing Lab namely; Quadrifoglio, Vintage Denim and Old Burgundy; *Picture taken from their website The ink I will be reviewing today is Syuurushi, as you can see it has very stylish packaging… Here is the box... …and the cap. Syuurushi or Red Urushi from Pen & Message is a very unique colour shifting ink depending on the paper you use. Being an owner and user of urushi fountain pens from Nakaya and Danitrio, I love the idea of an ink based on urushi, in this case a red urushi. On the Pen & Message website, they describe the ink as follows (please note this is a literal cut and paste job from Google translate so…); "Lacquer ware I made it with consciousness of Hare's day. I imaged red and made it vermillion of my favorite Japanese lacquer so that I can use it everyday. The color changes slightly when writing and when dry. It is a vermillion that is more like brown than it looks in the image, and when you write it in bold you can enjoy shading." This is a very nicely conceived ink, as described above, and the colour shifting is not only observable as the ink dries, but also depends on what paper you use. On Hobonichi TR paper Syuurushi has some characteristics of BunguBox Sweet Potato Purple with its purpley- tones sheening to green. In contrast, on Original Crown Mill white card it resembles the brand new BunguBox Ink of Narato, with its deep red and sheen to illuminous green. To me Syuurushi looks much more like the red urushi found on my Danitrios Genkai’s when used on Original Crown Mill paper and Rhodia paper. On Hobonichi TR paper it is much more pink/ fuchsia in appearance, as you will see... Here is a writing sample on Rhodia reverse grid pad with a Jinhao X250…it has a surprisingly nice fine steel nib, though it was sold as a “medium”… As you can see on Rhodia Syuurushi looks very much like red urushi. Here’s a close up of the writing sample; A very nice red indeed. Here it is below with an actual red urushi fountain pen- the Danitrio Genkai in matt shu dame finish, a good likeness... It is when you start using other papers that the ink starts to do strange things… Below is a dry sample on Original Crown Mill white mini note cards, this definitely has the look of BunguBox Ink of Naorato about it, with its other worldly green sheen… Now things get really weird, the same Syuurushi but this time on Hobonichi TR Paper…definitely has some Sweet Potato Purple aspect to it, but even sheenier! Here is Sweet Potato Purple just for confirmation of said similarities…ok SPP is definitely less pink and more purple…but sheen is similar. A pretty incredible ink all round, but beware it can bleed through a bit on Hobonichi paper. To be safe I will use it exclusively in the Jinhao X250 I currently have it loaded up in. All in all Syuurushi is a very intriguing ink. A nice addition to my my Sailor ink collection.

Penland Cafe is a fountain pen shop/ cafe based in Nagoya City, Japan. They sell a wide range of fountain pens including Montblanc, Pelikan, Aurora, Waterman and Parker, in addition to their quirky inks. You cannot buy directly from Penland Cafe unless visiting in person. Instead if you are outside of Japan you must use a forwarding service such as White Rabbit Express, which is how I bought them. I only heard about Penland Cafe and its famous inks very recently, whilst perusing the famous rare Sailor inks thread. I had also seen pictures of their bottles pop up on Instagram and the like. From what I have read on-line people seem to stumble across the place whilst on holiday, and end up buying a few inks as a souvenir. Aside from a couple of quick swabs and a few squiggled words, I haven't heard much talk of these inks, let alone seen full reviews. There are four inks in the Penland Cafe line up; Utsurigi (sepia) Penland Green Red Cliff Fountain BlueI did think about buying all four in the set but the blue didn't look that special to me plus I'm not really a blue ink person (though I still manage to have quite a few of them...). I'm not sure why I didn't purchase Red cliff, I think maybe it reminded me too much of Ancient Copper, which unfortunately managed to stain the section of my Sailor KOP Demo Instead I went for Utsurigi and Penland Green, here they are; The ink I'll be reviewing today is Pen-land Green. The ink comes in the diamond-shaped Sailor bottles with a very psychedelic-looking label on it. The label helpfully reflects the colour of the ink inside. There is definitely a 70’s theme going on here with the design and fonts. As you can see from above, the fountain- pen nib interpretation could be taken straight from a Beatles album. There is no sticker on the cap and no label on the box. Pen-land Green is described on Pen-land Cafe's website as "a serene and deeply elegant green". Here is my attempt at an "elegant" writing sample with stub nib... As you can see a very stony green with a lot of grey in it. Sometimes it's so dark it can look black, particularly when using a fine nib. At other times it can look a lot like Utsurugi. It's only when you look very closely you can see the difference. Here is a Pen-land Cafe Battenburg cake to help differentiate the two a little better... Looking at the Battenburg above, Pen-land Green reminds me of one of my favourite inks, Kobe #34 Souraken Green Tea. Here is a slightly out of focus snippet for reference. Much lighter. Definitely edging toward the spinachy end of green. This ink has a lot of shading too... Here is a close up of the two Pen-land offerings with Pen & Message Quadrifoglio thrown in for good measure... The same 3 greens compared on Original Crown Mill laid paper... You see how dark this Pen-land Green ink is? Thinking about it Sailor Do-you (which is a brown ink, by the way) might be a more valid comparison vs. green. Full page Hobonichi swatches of Pen-land Green, Souraken Green Tea and Quadrifoglio... Soooo dark. Next to these two "green greens" especially. As you can see there is some sheeny business going on, like a dark brown shimmery metal (goes off to Google to look up dark brown metals...). In terms of shading it has some, as you can see from the Hobonichi sample below. But not loads. Nowhere near the shading you get with Souraken Green Tea for example, which is a wicked shader. Just noticed here it looks a bit Noodlers Burma Brown Road... Is it waterproof? Actually, I think it is... Compare this to Quadrifoglio... My attempt at coffee filter chromatography...I still haven't learned how to read the results yet (lol!). Pen-land Green on the left, Utsurigi on the right... Dry time below, Pen-land Green on the bottom, Utsurigi on the top... In terms of flow it's about 6/10 on Rhodia paper. It feels a bit drier than Utsurigi, in both the Jinhao X250 and the Montblanc Karajan with stub nib I used it in. Utsurigi is very smooth and nice to write with on Hobonichi TR paper. Penland-Green is also nice on Hobonichi, just not as nice as Utsurigi. In terms of behaviour, I feel Utsurugi is very safe, whereas Pen-land Green may dry up a bit, so I wouldn't want to leave it in my Karajan for long. I have no proof there is any reason to worry about this ink in my nicer pens- it may be completely fine. I understand this is not a very scientific assessment. I'll leave it in the Jinhao for month and see if there are any issues. I'll leave you with a completely unnecessary picture of my Montblanc Karajan taking it's fill... Verdict: Is it even green? Depending on the paper you use it can look very saturated and black, Do-you grey-brown or something else entirely. I think if Iroshizuku made this ink they would sell it as a grey. I'm sure there is another name for this curious Pen-land- in-between-green-grey-black-colour. My ink vocabulary is very limited and maybe theirs is too which is why they called it Pen-land Green. Also true of Utsurigi which is billed as "sepia" but is anything but. Maybe the confusion just adds to the mystery... If you hadn't guessed by now, out of the two Pen-land inks I prefer Utsurigi. As far as greens go, Kobe Souraken Green Tea is still my No.1. I have to say I think Pen-land Cafe have been successful in creating "a serene and deeply elegant green". It is a green redolent of nature. Not overly saturated, but not too weak either. In broader nibs it's chalky look gives it a heritage feel. A mysterious ink for sure, but a welcome addition to my rare Sailor ink collection.

Hi I have query ... How can we buy Store exclusive inks from Japan... like Maruzen Are there any spotters or persons who can help???

Hello everyone, I absolutely love the Shigure colour from sailor seasons ink, perfect blend of purple, blue, and black for everyday writing. Unfortunately, for some odd reason (and very un-sailor like) the ink misbehaves allot! Firstly, the ink does not have have good flow at all, and often causes skipping when writing long sessions. (tried it on 4 different pens: 3 wet and juicy flow, 1 drier flow pen) Second, the ink seems to dry up really quick when at the nib+feed. It has difficulty starting in many of my pens if left uncapped, even for a very short period of time. Anyone else experiencing this? Or is this just the bottle of ink I received? I really love this colour but due to its misbehavior, I end up not using it at all...

As may be well known presently, Sailor produces custom inks for select stores in Japan. Some such store is called "Bungbox". They have a line of about 37 inks, some of which are special edition. Some inks from this collection have become well-known within the FPN community of ink lovers. Recently, Vanness Pen has started stocking this line of inks. Well they're trying to do so. They get a few in, then sell out. They can't seem to get a large lot of extensive stock in at one time. Currently they only have a few bottles of a couple inks. Perhaps this will change in the future. Also, Bungbox now has an Amazon shop, where they have a few inks and some custom pens. I prefer to use their Japanese site translated by google. I only wish it would translate the buttons! Though perhaps that would make "Add to Cart" far too easy. I recently ordered from Vanness upon their last shipment some of the inks. One of them is named "88 Green Tea". It is apparently only available during the season when new green tea is available. So it may be that they'll have made a certain number of bottles each year around the same time. The color is muted yellow-green. At first I wasn't sure that I would like it. Dark, murky greens are the ones I love. But this ink I've found to be very nice. And it works well for me to add notes, annotations, and corrections to a page in dark green. This is one of the least water-resistant inks that I've tested. The image implies that a decent amount of ink remains behind, and it does, but no where near as much as many others. Water droplets lift ink right off the page. Of course, tea blends completely with water, so the ink captures that quality as well as the appearance. The inks come in very classy boxes with vintage style bottles. Sorry about the shadows, but this ended up being the best pic of the lot. It does capture very well the range of tones possible with this ink. A closeup view at an angle to try and show details of the ink. Waterfastness test If you compare this with others I've done, you'll see this ink is much less waterfast or even resistant.

I'm hearing rumors that Sailor has changed its ink formula, and now the previously well-behaved inks are clogging up pens overnight. Any experience like this? I'm specifically interested in the new line of Sailor Jentle Four Seasons inks. Tina