Pencil Neck Geek

Man, I've been in a funk since late last week. I won't get into details, but I'm sure there's a life's lesson here somewhere regarding how to deal with lazy, disrespectful people without letting them bother me. In the mean time, I'm having a hell of a time figuring out whatever that lesson might be, so if this post seems a bit manic, it's probably not a coincidence.

I'd planned to convey the inner turmoil I'm going through at the moment. But F that. I'm moving on. I'm going to talk about something that makes me HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY!!

For anyone with an affinity for writing utensils, Japan is like Disney World. I've always enjoyed drawing/doodling/writing, and for that reason I've always appreciated a good pen. I would spend hours in Staples back in the States searching out the best pens for whatever it was I was going to be doing. Japan is a country as geeky about stationary, and all that goes with it, as me.

It's quite a site to see the pen cases that every single student in this country has. They are full to the brim with pencils, erasers, lead refills, a pen for every color of the rainbow, rulers, white-out pens, and USB cars. They often unload so much crap that they are constantly knocking it off their desks throughout class. It's a gold mine for forgotten erasers, half-spent pens, and misplaced containers of lead at the end of any given class. The other day one of my students pulled out a pen with a built-in white-out tape dispenser (they've taken to white out tape here rather than good old 'liquid paper'). Awestruck, the student next to him pulled out an identical pen that had a USB card in the top. It was a beautiful moment as these two pen-o-philes compared their pieces, while equally impressed students around them ooh-ed and aah-ed.

These are people who, when giving a matching activity, take out a ruler and draw perfectly straight lines from one item to the next. If there is text that needs to be crossed out, again comes the ruler. I love this obsessive attention to detail, and the fact that it involves sweet pens and pencils is even cooler to me.

And by the way, you haven't lived until you've used a Japanese MONO eraser. The smoothest eraser EVER.

So you can imagine my joy when I arrived here and went into my first office supply/stationary shop. Japan got some fine pens. They've got every color and thickness you could imagine, all of them writing smooth. There's no ball point BS here. I've been queer for Japanese pens for quite a while.

But it wasn't until I took my current job at an engineering school that I was turned onto a whole other realm of goodness when it comes to writing implements: mechanical pencils. As you may expect, a country like Japan with such high standards for pens is no slouch when it comes to mechanical pencils (or traditional pencils for that matter, but those aren't my cup of tea). But man, walk into the book store at my school and prepare to be impressed (if you are total dork like me, that is). These are high quality mechanical pencils. Not a scrap of plastic on them, all aluminum bodies, capable of taking multiple types of lead, smooth action...good stuff. Here's a few from my heard, along with my trusty MONO eraser. These pencils are about $8 a pop.



The silver bomber there doesn't get much use these days. I bought it on a whim because it takes about 2 mm lead, which is relatively gigantic, and I thought would be cool (it wasn't). Normal mechanical pencils are around .5 mm. You can see how big the tip is compared to the other two pencils. Wow, this post just got odd. I suddenly feel very lame.

But you get the point (oh pun!!). I like pens and pencils, and they have some nice ones here in Japan. Enough said.

Not too much else going one here other than me and my neuroses. Hopefully we'll part ways by the end of the week. My birthday is on Thursday, and I'd hate to turn 29 as a basket case, so there's some incentive to pry myself out of my malaise. OK, time for me to call it a night. Think good thoughts. That's what I need to do.