Japanese Art Supplies are NEXT LEVEL! *WOW!*

I'm back. I went to Japan. You don't know that because I've never said it on the channel. I snuck in a holiday. And not only that, I went shopping. Oh boy. I had a lot of fun shopping at some really well-known and well stocked stationary and art stores in Japan. I didn't realize how renowned some of these shops were, but let me tell you, they're worth the reputation that I didn't know they had. And we had an

incredible trip to Japan. There's actually a few vlogs over on my vlog channel that I'll link to in the description if you want to see that the whole journey in more detail. It was one of the coolest trips I've ever taken. But as far as this project goes, I went to two shops that are really well known for their huge selection of art supplies and crafts. The first being Hands, which is a multi-story building with several floors dedicated to art, craft, and stationery. And this is where I blew most of my budget, mainly because I was here first. But I mean, to be honest, they both pretty much had the same variety when it came to stationary and drawing materials, which is really what I was focusing on this video. And while Hans has a few other floors dedicated to more miscellaneous things like bags or luggage or whatever else, there were at least three very full floors dedicated to the kind of things I was interested in. And my god, was I happy to be browsing. This is my favorite pen in the whole world. This pen. Usually when I'm going around a shopping center, it's with my wife and I'm dragging my feet and trying to be as patient as I can as she's really enjoying the shopping experience. And in this instance, the rolls were reversed. — It's what? Well, I don't Why are you walking away? Well, cuz they're point 2. — What does that mean? — What is wrong with you? — I could have spent all day at every single one of these stations looking at and geeking out over mechanical pencils or pens or any one of the categories that I bought things from and I'm going to be reviewing in this video. And many, if not most of these stations had try before you buy ways to use the materials, which I really appreciated and meant that my choices weren't just random guessing and throwing things in a basket, which is particularly helpful because I can't read Japanese. The other shop is called Sakaido, a fivestory building in Tokyo dedicated to art and art alone. And this felt like the mecca of art. Now, like I said, I'd pretty much blown my birthday budget at hands already. But I wasn't too upset about that because I really did see everything I would have purchased as things I'd already gotten, but I did come across a few extra things to expand and complete the scope of this video. But suffice it to say, so Kaido as a store itself really does cover more categories than hands in terms of art and crafts, including things like foam and leather work and miniatures, plastic card or foam core board, beautifully organized. Everything is so freaking cool. I could live in this shop. So, if you ever find yourself in Tokyo, either of the shops are incredible, but I do have to say Sakaido is beyond anything I've ever experienced. And I will go back if I ever go back again. It's incredible.

incredible. Now, while it might appear that I've just randomly picked everything my heart desires from a stationary store, I assure you there is at least some subconscious method to my madness. Because as I was sorting everything out, it became clear to me that everything I chose fits into one of three categories as to why I bought it. The first, I know I love The Thing and this is a new variant of The Thing I haven't had the opportunity to try before. The second, something I've never seen or tried and looks like it has potential. And the third, something I've only experienced bad ones of. Are the Japanese versions of them good? So, uh, this is the result of my reckless spending. Uh, I want to just reaffirm it was my birthday. But also, this is for you. This is It is for you, though, because I want you to experience the absolute nerdy joy I had of seeing things and be like, "Does that work? What's a foam eraser? Ooh, midlines. Is that a gradient? Oh, this is my favorite pen I bought. No, that this is my There's other kinds of my favorite pen. They have everything other THAN A. 5 MECHANICAL PENCIL. OKAY, there's a lot here and we're going to go through all of it. You hear that? Australian Taxation Office. This is legitimately taxdeductible. It's like a magical landscape of stationery. First off, this writing mat. I've never experienced a writing mat before. I've never seen one for sale. I've seen lots of cutting boards. I use them all the time. I've never used a writing mat. I'm just going to use it throughout the video and see if by the end of the video I have experiences to share. So, we'll put a pin in that one. But the categories I will be reviewing one at a time are mechanical pencils and lead pencils and sharpeners, erasers, hard tip brush pens, mild liners, which is a quirky variant of the brush pen, pens and paint, and brushes. And last but not least, there are three things that I wanted to share that I got, but I'm not going to be using or reviewing in this video because I got them thinking they really could stand alone in their own video and more of a deep dive. first being origami and diving into the depths of learning the art of paper folding. I mean, I saw these and I thought, hey, I've never tried origami properly. They look gorgeous. What better place to get some material from than Japan? So, we'll dive into that at some point in the future. Then, I saw this display with miniatures. And if you know me, you know I love miniatures. And these were very obviously Japanese style and aesthetic and buildings like I usually don't see, but also kits that seem really meticulously put together for you to create in perfect detail exactly what you see in the boxes. And that just seems so cool and cute. This will definitely take more time than I have even mentally prepared for and I have to experience it at some point. And hopefully that's in a future video, too. And last but not least, there was a section on display of wax seals, which I've never done wax seals before, but every time I see a movie and they're doing the little they cook the little and they pour and they do the stamp and I'm like, not only is that super satisfying, but I want to do that, but I've never known like what to get. And they had everything on display in terms of like what you'd use for it. So, I just got a whole bunch of different satisfying looking colors, papers, envelopey stuff, and everything that looked like it would be what I need to do that. And again, be something I might do in a future video, but not this one. So, that does it for the broad overview of the categories I bought. Let's go into the deep dive and start playing with some of the coolest, weirdest, quirkiest, and highest quality looking stationary I have ever seen. Starting

with category one, mechanical pencils and lead. For those of you who don't know, I have always been a bit of a sucker for a good mechanical pencil. I actually did a video a while ago trying to discover my favorite, my Roto Ring 800, which has a collapsible tip. I want where possible to reference my usual experience. So with a little bit of a HB. 5 drawing with my RotoRing 800 collapsible mechanical pencil. This is a very good drawing experience. It's the reason I keep this pen with me all the time. But this was the default HB lead and the only kind of lead that I get in Australia. So for my first new experience from Japanese stationary, I switched to a 4B lead. And simply in just getting it out of the case, I was already blown away by the case for the lead. This is insanely innovative. Most of the lead cases we have for the 0. 5 lead, which is pretty much the only lead you can get in Australia, is like this. You have a little cap. The lead is the length of the whatever is holding it. And you have to sort of tip it out into your hand and fiddle your fingers until you grab the leads you want and put it in your pencil. But usually this leads to dropping a couple of them and you need to try and pick them up. Sometimes they break and you often end up sort of dragging along whatever surface you're on and it rolls and just trying to pick it up with your fingernails. But this case for the 4B lead pulls forward, clicks open, and effortlessly reveals the mold to be simply taken out. Why is this already so revolutionary and mind-blowing? Anyway, I switch to the 4B lead in my pencil. I have never used a mechanical pencil that feels like I'm actually drawing with a 4B pencil. It just complements my style and drawing preferences, being able to go much bolder and have much more solid outlines and sketches and shapes while also, of course, being light and crisp when I want to be. So, I'm honestly going to be switching to 4B for my regular drawing, which has never been available to me, and I love it. The lead is a bit softer, so you lose a bit of sharpness quicker and it runs out a bit faster and it snaps a little bit easier, too, because it is softer. But at the same time, these are minor trade-offs for what to me feels like a much more enjoyable drawing experience and cooler outcome. Now, this was drawing with the Roto Ring 500, which is a really good experience. It's pretty much identical to my 800 except the 800 is collapsible. The other. 5 mechanical pencil I got was the KS01, which has this nifty little hardness indicator up to 2B. So, didn't show the 4B that I have. It's a great drawing experience. Feels very similar. I just tend to prefer the aluminium and slightly heavier feel of those roto ring pencils, but overall just fantastic experience. And the 4B is a game changer for me. Absolutely love it. Now, on to all the variants that I haven't experienced. Starting with the very finest and thinnest, the 0. 2 Pentel Orns PP502. This is one I didn't get any extra leads for. Whoopsie. This was fine. you have to draw real dainty with these thinner ones cuz man that lead snaps super easy. But that aside, a nice drawing experience if you're really light-handed and you want a lot of access to detail or to be working really small. Then to the 0. 3 which I had to spare leads for. And this is the Staedler 92535-03B. Yeah, okay. Not the sexiest name in the world, but all in all, no discernable difference between this and the 0. 2, honestly. I did have spare leads for the. 3, however. And again, the case itself is already better than everything I'm used to, which flips open and you basically have a small hole that it tips through. So, a smaller amount of leads come out that you grab and put in the pencil. Switching to the 2B lead, it is noticeably more bold than the HB that it came with by default. And again, this is much more of a dainty drawing experience. Really not for shading, though of course you can attempt it. Really feels like it's intended for sharp lines and much more of a designer's refinement and detail pencil. But now we're getting thicker to the 0. 7. This is the Stainless 92535-07. It's a nice drawing experience. Pretty standard. A little looser than the. 5 that I usually use just because it's that little bit thicker. But it's when of course I switch to the Tuby that things get shaken up a little bit. Starting again with the goddamn case. Oh my god. This one's I think my favorite so far. This one clips open and slides sideways. So, it's like the least risk of damaging the lead as you access it. And again, lays it all out so easy to grab. And once I put those into the pencil, of course, the 2B is a much more bold drawing experience than the HB. And to me, more enjoyable. As we move to the 0. 9, the Staedler F77019N. With my big bulky hands, it just feels like a little too small to hold. But that said, it's starting to feel like a much bigger, looser drawing, sketching experience. but also it's starting to become noticeably more enjoyable for shading, especially once I've switched up those softer leads in the case. Then we move up to 1. 3 mm. Continuing that experience of the drawing and sketching becoming much looser and softer with shading becoming much more doable. This really certainly feels like it's less for refined sketching and much more for loose, broad, undetailed work and really much more suited to shading and rendering. didn't seem to have much varying options when it comes to the hardness of the lead, but this felt like perfect kind of lead for this thickness pencil. Anyway, last but not least, we have the 2. 0. Technically the thickest of the mechanical pencils. I got this Staedler 92535-20. I didn't have extra leads for this, but the one that I came with, I was surprised as to how firm it was, especially it being a 2. 0. I was expecting this to be the continuation of everything I've experienced so far. This was quite a firm lead. It almost feels like too Hishish. So, it actually felt like the tip stayed pretty sharp. I felt like I could be quite loose with my sketch but not be too sloppy. While I could also use it for shading and covering broad areas, this feels a little bit like the best of both worlds. So, my top picks from my experience with these mechanical pencils would be honestly the pencil that is already the one that I keep with me dayto-day. So, by extension the 500, which is the one I got from the Japanese shop, but with the 4B leads that I got. These are fantastic. and a surprise co-winner, the 2. 0 pencil that I tried last, the thickest one with the firm lead. Really surprisingly enjoyable to use and

versatile. Now, we're moving on to pencils and sharpeners. Starting off with this little electric sharpener. I do have a large electric sharpener which I use for all of my videos. Pretty heavy duty, somewhat expensive. It uses a US plug because I couldn't get it in Australia and it's quite large. So, I saw this small batterypowered electric sharpener and was really interested to see how it holds up. It works great, honestly, if obviously a little slower than my massive machine, but at the same time, what you compromise for in speed, you get in much smaller, more portable size, and it feels super reliable. Emptying it out was neat enough, but it was a little hard to get the shavings that were sort of stuck behind the spinny sharpener bit. And when I tried to put a pencil in the sharpener hole to make it spin to sort of spit them out, that didn't work because it has a safety feature. I guess it won't spin the razor of the sharpener when you open it up and you got your fingers in there. Well done them thinking of that cuz I obviously didn't. Anyways, it worked fine. So, I decided to put it to the test and see if it would work good under a bit more pressure. This time, sharpening an entire pencil that I could afford to burn away. And this little sharpener didn't sweat and held all of the shavings of a full pencil fairly comfortably inside its housing before I emptied it. I'd say this little AA powered electric sharpener is a solid winner, especially for a space constrainted desk setup. Speaking of space constraint, we have these small contained box sharpeners. It was already innovative as soon as I used it because I could see the pencil being sharpened. Why does this feel like such a big deal? I think honestly because most of the portable sharpeners that I've used are like this little silver one where you can't see the lead and you also like as you sharpen it, it's open and dirty and spills into you know whatever you're holding it over doesn't contain all the shavings. And then when you do get the contained ones that have like canisters to hold the shavings, usually the housing that holds the razor that sharpens the pencil is part of the lid mechanism and is therefore usually opaque. Whereas in this case, these little guys not only sharpen well, that's good. an artist sharpening a pencil can see clearly if it's sharpening the pencil well, which is such a nice relief and breath of fresh air. So, both of these sharpening experiences are a win in my book, better than most everything I've ever tried. So, now on to the pencils. I got pencils I don't see a lot of. Starting off with these double-sided blue and red ones. I grabbed a couple of them because I really enjoy being able to sketch with both blue and red. So, I have really no notes on this one cuz it is what I expected it would be and I really like it. Next, we have these Mitsubishi 10B pencils. Now, I actually got these because I was recommended them by Aaron Blae who did a YouTube short sharing a whole bunch of his like favorite art products and he described these pencils as like drawing with chocolate. — And he's right. This feels really nice. It's buttery. It's real smooth. Of course, definitely suited to larger work areas. It feels slightly like a wax pastel. It's just really fun to draw with. And last in the pencils category, we have the metal pencil. Now, I've used one of these before. I was actually given it as a gift from ASUS. So, when I saw one in the Japanese art shop, of course, I had to compare because to me, the one that I was given by ASUS is cool, but also much too firm and really like drawing with a 4H pencil. So, while this one that I got from the Japanese art shop feels like a two-H pencil as opposed to a 4H pencil, when I directly compare them, it does feel a little nicer, kind of a more pencily grain to the drawing experience. Then, I decided to do a durability test because they're sort of touted as mess-free, everlasting alternatives to pencils that you never need to sharpen. Now, it took quite a bit just to get it down a little bit, but still didn't do a lot. So, it certainly last. And on top of that, I could easily get back a nice sharp tip by just simply rubbing it while I spin it lightly on a piece of fine sandpaper. So that's pretty cool. I don't think you'd ever really have the problem of getting a flat tip when you're starting to feel you're losing that tip. You need simply rotate that pencil 180° and all of a sudden your tip is sharp again because the flat angle is now aimed up and away from the paper. With that said, I honestly see these metal pencils as more of a fun little gimmick or an alternative travel friendly version of a pencil than the kind I like to use, which feel more nice for drawing. Now, it's on to erasers.

And as a direct point of comparison, I'm going to start off by using my current go-to eraser, which is the Staedler Mars Plastic Eraser. And as you can see, even with some firm application, really struggles to fully clear it all out. So, now on to the first of my various Japanese eraser experiences to come. The foam eraser. I've never heard of one. I've never used one. And it blew my mind. Why is this not the standard? Look. Look at that comparison. And it doesn't even do all the smeary smudging. It just erases. 9. 5 out of 10. Absolutely beautiful. Didn't 100% clear it out, but god damn, got close. Next, we have a few more quirky options. The Mitsubishi Super Eraser Pen. erase like you're drawing. It was a little unfamiliar, if awkward, in hand, but it erased really well and much better than my go-to. I'll give this one a 9 out of 10. The Mono One plastic eraser is this little guy, which you twist to extend, and it has replaceable fat noodle things that you can just swap out. Overall, pretty effective, but not as comfortable. I give this one 8 out of 10. And then we have the Mono Zero Elastometer razor. And I was really hopeful for this. It looks super cool. I liked the sort of square rectangly shape of the eraser. It's good mechanical design, but in use, my hopes were dashed a bit because honestly felt a bit awkward. The metal sleeve that sort of houses the end of the eraser feels like it a little too easily scrapes against the paper and also honestly really didn't erase very well at all. Not even as good as my not great default. So, four out of 10. Then, as we move towards the novelty category, we have the PO rubber pio. Using Google Lens, I translated this to say the eraser you'll want to use to the very end. Honestly, I found this hard to hold. It performed pretty well, better than my current go-to. 8. And now we arrive to the novelty category. I saw these and I got them for a giggle, but I do not have high hopes for them because frankly, especially all of the novelty erasers I have seen in my days, they are more for toy usage than erasing things. And as you can see, my novelty erasers are disappointing and smudgy and ugly. Really barely erase anything. Definitely do not like them. And I did not have high hopes for the Japanese erasers. But Japanese novelty erasers performed better than my go-to everyday eraser. Every single one of them. The ice cream, the sushi, this weird Mount Fuji puzzle eraser. They're better than my freaking eraser. In disbelief, I went back to my sketch pages from before and used my go-to on one of my HB sketches and then the novelty on another and the novelty eraser one by not a small amount. Furthermore, the foam eraser, the one with the best performance out of my chart so far, felt more like using the eraser tool in Photoshop than what I'm used to using in an eraser. No smudging, almost pristine. This changes everything for me. I'm only ever going to buy these moving forward. This is so fun. It's also slightly depressing. I'm going to be there's a little part of me that's dying inside that this stuff has been kept from me my whole life. Novelty erasers could be cool. Who knew? I don't expect to get so fired up about stationary, but I do. All right, new

category and one of my personal favorites, hard tip brush pens, also known as plastic tip pens or calligraphy pens. Starting with my favorite, which is a Japanese pen by Tombbo, the Fuenosuk pen, which I have used as my staple and go-to for years. I saw it in the shop and grabbed one because the one I use all the time is starting to dry out a bit. It's just a matter of opening them all and jumping into a scribble montage whereupon I will share some of my favorites and my thoughts after. A lot of the experiences of these were fairly similar, but to be honest, I still come back to the Fuenos suit as my favorite. With that said, there are two wild cards that are really fun and cool for different reasons. The Pentel calligraphy pen, SFW34A, awesome uh naming conventions, Pentel. This has a pretty nice plastic tip like the Fenosuk, which I still prefer, but is double-sided, and we'll get to the other side later. Then we have a Pilot calligraphy pen which I can't find the name for and when I translate it simply says instant pen for celebration and condolences. It's a card writing pen for happy and sad cards. Again the plastic tip is nothing to write home about. It's not quite as good as the Fujeno suit, but it's still a great drawing and writing experience. But this also has a second side with another little wild card experience. The Pentel has a spongy brush on the other side which is still slightly firm but also has a sort of inner beveled ridge that gives it a bit of extra spring. The ink flow through it is really nice. So that makes this alternative side to the brush pen. A really rich calligraphy drawing experience. Feels really nice and really solid ink flow. And then the Pilot one has an alternative which is the same plastic tip, but it's light gray, which is just surprisingly cool and never something I thought I would want. And now I have it and I love it because I could do shading or like even like pen sketching or like just add depth or variation with a pen. Super cool. Absolutely love it. So now I have three favorite hard tip brush pens. Then we have a whole new category of hard tip brush pens I didn't know existed. Colors. They come in colors, guys. Just going to get one of each. See, they're just jumping in. I put down a little swatch of each of these. They all feel really nice to draw with. And it was nice to put these down and sort of see which colors jumped out at me most. And obviously, again, being heavy-handed and interested in boldness in my art, I really liked some of these stronger, bolder, more saturated colors. They certainly feel like they're really much more intended for calligraphy than illustration or art, but at the same time, they do feel pretty cool and can get a really crisp effect for illustration. All in all, these are a really fun addition to my stationary lineup, and I know a lot of people would have a lot of fun with these. In particular, my daughter. I can see her having a wild time with these, and I'm really glad I have them. And now, we move on from hard tip brush pens

to soft tip brush pens. Now, these are usually much more smooth and flowy and relaxed and often have a bit of texture to them. The first handful I use have slightly different properties to each of them. And out of those, I had one I picked as a favorite, which I'll put aside and come back to. And then the final four or five that I used share the same thing in common, and that is that they are more of a bristle brush experience. So, these are a really fun and interesting thing to use where the brush tip of the brush pen is literally made up of lots of fine bristles. And these feel particularly traditional and organic because you literally have the ink cartridge being the body of the pen, which you need to squeeze and sort of pop to get the ink to first flow through. They all work really nice for what they're intended for. I absolutely adore the blue and the red that I chose. So, with the turquoise red and black and my favorite of the spongier brush pens, decided to give those a little bit more room to breathe on the larger sketchbook and see how they feel in a bit more of an artistic application. So, my favorite spongy brush pen was the Kuratake brush pen, which on the package when trying to figure out what it is specifically, says brush pen for gift envelopes. You can write like this. And it includes a sample writing strip, which gave me the perfect practice exercise task thing to try out my hand at calligraphy because if I could copy it in a way that it translated accurately, then I would consider that a success. And I was pretty proud of myself because it translated exactly the same as the sample strip of paper, which it turns out says, "Congratulations and thanks for your gift," which is perfect cuz it was for my birthday. Thanks for my gift to me, but also thanks for your gift to me. Which I will express with the remaining favorite brush pens that I have to use, these really cool Pentel art brush pens, which turns out really layer together quite nicely as well. And with the help of Google Translate, I was able to put down what I am grateful to you for. Specifically, thank you for liking this video, preferring this video, I guess, subscribing, which is subscribing, and last but not least, the invitation for you to follow Epic Anatomy, or at least as I wrote it, Grand Anatomy over on Kickstarter. Now, this is launching in a week. One week from now, Epic Anatomy is launching. I'm very, very excited. And also, if you sign up and you can get in there first, you get 10% off in the early bird discount. So, don't miss out. Go sign up to the Kickstarter page. For those of you who don't know, it's a soft cover physical book, Epic Anatomy, that dives deep into the human body in a really fun way. Anatomy can be notoriously complicated and frustrating or hard to learn. And Epic Anatomy makes it fun by having graphic novel chapter openers and taking on a journey of a mad scientist character who has to learn the intricacies of anatomy to build his ultimate superhuman army to take over the world. And if liking or subscribing or getting Epic Anatomy is your birthday present to me, I'm extremely grateful because they all go a long way to supporting what we do here, human art. Hooray. Now, we're not actually 100% done with the brush pens yet because there's this batch of Pentel dual metallic brushes. So, I thought I'd give those a crack before we move on to the next category. And as I got using them, it turns out the jewel was not dual tip. The jewel is referencing really the way the sparkles interact with the ink. They are often sort of two-toned. So, some of these inks, for example, the black is black and pink. So, they all have this sort of complimentary sparkle color that looks really gorgeous. And honestly, it is incredible. [snorts] Incred. And they're so satisfying. And the colors are really beautiful. Then we have another category which are not brush pen. I didn't know what category to put them in. So they're in their own category. They're called mild liners. I thought they were midlininers whenever I glanced at the title, but no, they're

mild liners, which is the also a very mid name. And these pitch the gimmick that I have tried once before from Chameleon alcohol markers and despised. It just felt super gimmicky and not really practical or all that impressive. And to be honest, I wasn't blown away by these either. As superior as all of the Japanese art supplies have been so far, these mild liners were pretty mild for my interest. I could see this would appeal to some people. So, I don't want to write this off entirely cuz I do think there are people who would have a lot of fun with this. It's really just not me. I think even just the basic colors of the pens look kind of nice in a really pretty pastel way. I don't feel like I have all that much control in getting that gradient. They're kind of cool. They'll make a good birthday present for my niece or

something. Now, on to the pens category. And this was a tricky one in terms of how to make it interesting cuz they're pens. So, while using all of these different art supplies so far, I've been taking notes with the various pens and I'm really happy with how they feel. But in order to properly just review them for you here, I felt it most appropriate to directly compare to the sort of ballpoint pens that I use day-to-day. So, I literally grabbed one of each of every different kind of ballpoint pen that I could find lying around the office and write a little bit with each of them. They work okay. The first few letters of each of the pens is always that little bit rough as the ink gets rolling in through the thing. And then often I have the experience that I had when I got to number five here and that is just that the pen doesn't want to work. It's dried up halfway through the ball tip or barrel or something and it doesn't matter what you do, it's not going to come out even though you can see it has plenty of ink. The Japanese ballpoint pens, however, are completely next level. Now, with that said, we're talking about ballpoint pens. So, you don't really have super high expectations when going into something like this. They just need to write consistently and well, and as we've experienced with literally everything we've used in this whole video so far. They are well above the average performance of this medium. I enjoyed absolutely all of them. I was a little bit surprised by number four, which is a food ball 1. 5. And this is the reason I've get random things so impulsively because this is the kind of thing that feels like I'm striking gold. I am going to find the different kinds of these food ball pens that they have. I'm assuming they have finer versions of them and stock up because this will be the go-to ballpoint pen I will be using from now on. It just feels so nice. And last but not least, I had a couple of these what I thought were calligraphy pens. And when I opened them up, I got a little bit worried cuz I thought maybe I just bought like cartridge refills or something. So, I was getting a little bit worried. But when I translated the text on the back and saw the pictures, I realized that you actually just pull out the end there. And it is specifically just a dip pen, but a sort of portable one that protects the tip while you travel. So, you can get different tips and it just stores inside of the barrel. And when you want to use it, you pull it out and flip it out, but it doesn't have ink in it. So, I to use some dip ink. I tried it out first on the mild liner ink and that was fine. I guess it could be useful for something. And then I tried it out with actual dip ink and this was really cool. I feel like I'd benefit from maybe a finer tip and I specifically must have gotten a bold tip, but it was pretty comfortable to write with. And I think just as a tool to be able to travel with a dip pen that you can be confident the tip won't get ruined. It's cool. I like it. I'm glad I have them. But my overall favorites in the pen category are the Oto food ball pens. I have the 1. 5. I'm going to get some other ones. And the Pilot Japan Juice Up multiolor pen with black, blue, and red. Really comfortable in hand. Writes really consistently well. It's just great. And now I'm not going to be able to go back. write with cheap crap ballpoint pens anymore. Thanks, Japan. Last but

not least, we have paint and paint brush category. So, I didn't just get a variety of paint brushes. I got a few of these portable water brushes that sort of hold water inside the barrels and this calligraphy brush that looked extra Japanese. And we'll be using them on this Gansai Tumbi palette which has a mix of paints which is said to be usable as gouache or as watercolor. Now, I wasn't expecting to have much to say about these brushes that you fill with water, but as has happened several times already, surprise, good design, because I have a few of these already. Here's a couple. And as you can see, when you open them up, what I usually do is use a pipette to pick up some water and squirt it into the barrel of it just to make it a bit more clean to fill. But these Japanese ones have this extra addition of a little cap on top with a little hole in it. Just that small thing. At first, I was like, I have to pull this out. And then I realized, no, I don't have to use the pipet. You just hold it in the water, squeeze, and it fills up. And the other reason it's cool is because these are for traveling. So you can have them in your bag, and because it has the little hole, it's really unlikely to flood through the brush bristles and spill out into your bag because it's been sort of vacuumed and kept inside with a much smaller outlet. So good. All the thoughtful little things that actually really matter. Now, usually when you open up packaging that hides some of the bottom part of the contents, well, in what I'm used to, they're hiding empty box. Turns out with Japanese products, when you open it up and something was hard to see, they're just hiding more value. Like in this case, some gorgeous metallic colors and as it turns out, an entire really nice feeling premium lid cover that was totally hidden. That looks gorgeous. Now, on to the paints. And these are lovely. They look fantastic when going down. They are both vibrant but also really natural feeling and looking pigments. So I can imagine these would be exceptionally beautiful in landscapes and jibli inspired scenes. I mean it comes with a variety of like seven greens that are all really quite striking and beautiful. And there's this level of variety with pretty much all colors. They mix really well. Honestly, I am not going to have time to go into any detail on these because they look gorgeous and they deserve more time and more of a showcase than I have. I mean, this video is already very long so far. So, I'm so impressed with everything so far and really enjoying this paint already to the extent that this could totally be its own video. Let me know in the comments if you want to see me do a Ghibli style landscape or something inspired by that using Japanese paints. But just cuz we're running out of time in this video doesn't mean we can't see each of these paints. Because as it turns out, on the back of that surprise, beautiful lid is a swatch page so I could put down each of the colors and see what they all look like with full saturation on paper and in a way that I can refer to later. Again, surprise, convenience, and fantastic design. Oh, and on top of that, each of these sort of square color cups in my tray is refillable. So, in the art shop I was in, you could just buy replaceable single colors of the ones that you use most or maybe want extra of or even if you wanted to switch it up or swap a color for another. Just having that flexibility is so nice and very user friendly. And I guess the last

category in this video would be books. I've only bought the one kind of sketchbook, but I will say I like it. I really like they've taken to dry and wet medium very well. There's been like little to no bleed through. So, I am going to be getting more of these Canansen Desen drawing doojo books. As for this one, this is a funky uh sort of panoramic canvas. Like, how cool is that? So, you can make one piece that stretches. Maybe that's what I'll use my paints for. Let me know in the comments. But that, my friends, brings me to the end of this video. I've used all of the things except for the things I'll be doing things with in the future. I'm going to put in the description the specific ones of each category that I most loved and why and link to those so that you don't have to spend all of your birthday budget on all of it to know what is fantastic at least from my impressions. So my absolute favorites are down there and so is the link to the upcoming Kickstarter launching next week. So if you want 10% off, get an early sign up to be notified. I'm very excited and a little bit nervous. So I'm really looking forward to sharing that with you. And I am so grateful you've joined me for this video. I hope you've had as much fun with my birthday present as I have. Thank you so much for watching and until next time. Um, say that sounded Italian. I'll see you later.