#Namiki Falcon

[venomgaia]

what's good about a pilot falcon?

HI! The Pilot Falcon (older generations were sold in the US as the Namiki Falcon for whatever reason) is a japanese fountain pen manufactured by Pilot!

it's often referred to as the best modern flex pen, or the best gold nib for a beginner! Tldr for people who aren't pen nerds, a flex pen is a pen that...well, flexes! Most pens have some sort of "flex" to them that results in some sort of line variation, but flex pens can handle a relatively higher amount of pressure. Think like a G nib used in a lot of manga. Old pens were the MASTERS at this, and a good bit of that is due to the nibs being made of gold, which naturally has a "bounce" to it that modern steel nibs have a really hard time living up to. Most people wax poetic about Waterman or other vintages like that because of it. Even modern gold nibs can't really keep up with the gold nibs of yore, but the Falcon is considered to be one that can. I do think legally it's considered a "soft" nib, meaning it's not truly a flex pen but has a lot of flex qualities to it, but some terms that get used are used interchangably so. idk. True flex nibs aren't really a thing in fountain pens these days outside of Noodler's Ahab and Konrad (which are their own nightmare and a half tbh).

The Falcon prized amongst artists for it's very fine nib, which Japanese pen manufacturers like Pilot and Platinum are known for. A Japanese Fine is comparable to a Western (Kaweco, Lamy) Extra fine, and a lot of these pens come in an EF, F, and M. It gets alot of nice line variation despite being so small, and is really an all-around great pen, if legend is to be believed :] An alternative to buying the Pilot Falcon would be getting the Pilot 912 FA, which has something called the "Falcon Nib," not to be confused with the actual pen. They actually look pretty different. The FA nib (right) has these weird cuts on their side that help with flexing and allow it to mimic a full-flex nib, but again. According to legend, modern pens don't flex like vintage pens do, but it IS pretty close.

(sources mentioned in alt text)

I've never used either myself, but I'm pretty picky about my pens and so I don't know if I'd ever pay upwards of $200 unless I got familiar with the nib first tbh....The falcon's nib isn't offputting to me like many feel about it, but I'm particular about aesthetics and the feedback on paper and I can't tell if I like them just from looks alone lol. Right now, I don't have much experience with pilot nibs, but if i were to get a pilot pen, tbh I'm looking at the Pilot Elite/e95s in a fine or medium, or a vintage platinum pocket pen.

Anyways that's that and this is also that. *twirls so elegantly and then collapses onto the ground in slapstick fashion*

[97-liners]

so i downloaded pokémon sleep and saw this

and instantly went,,, hey, the pokémon company, that’s a pilot namiki falcon

[forgottenbones]

Custom Namiki Falcon, Part 2

[constantpai-blog]

"Counting down one's remaining years"

A little something for a friend, for sharing the joy of Joy of Life with me 😛😛😛 (if I were a better person I'd be drawing fanart, but this is the limit of my skills XD)

Song: 余年 (Remaining Years) from 庆余年 (Joy of Life)

Piano arrangement by Hiumann on Youtube

*** Pens and inks info ***

- Pilot Prera Calligraphy nib + Iroshizuku Benzaiten

- Platinum #3776 Century soft-fine nib + Iroshizuku Ebisu and Kujaku

- Pilot Custom Heritage 912 Falcon nib + Iroshizuku Fukurokuju

[inkophile]

Sunday Reads: Iroshizuku, Lamy And A Drama Queen

Sunday Reads: Iroshizuku, Lamy And A Drama Queen

Unlike those silly drama queens seeking attention from social media, this baby’s got the right moves – not too much victim but just enough to earn appreciation for a well-executed whine…

Putting A Lamy To Good Use

A falcon spotted in the wild

The Atlantic: How the Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive (2015)

Anderson Pens: Iroshizuku 100th Anniversary LE Ebisu (Love this color.)

A Pen House Survives in…

[inkstainedpaperbrain]

it’s always exciting to write a pen dry!

pen: namiki falcon extra fine

ink: lamy valentine pink

[theartofmany]

“Custom Namiki Falcon Resin Fountain Pen modified by John Mottishaw. He ground the nib (14k) extra fine and added flex to it (Spencerian customization). The nib requires medium pressure. The ink is Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo Night Sky (Greenish Deep Blue) which shades wonderfully on Bristol Board. This pen is difficult to use properly. Most fountain pens are not designed to achieve the line variation seen here.“ From Youtube channel TheImmovableMovers: Custom Namiki Falcon Resin Fountain Pen HD This is mesmerizing...

[samsvenn]

I'M IN LOVE WITH THE DIABOYS DIARIES HEADCANONS <3 could you continue with the others? 🥺💗

𝐒𝐚𝐤𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢 𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐬 𝐃𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬 [𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟐 ]

tw! graphic mentions of violence and gore sakamaki bros done!

𝐑𝐞𝐢𝐣𝐢

He’s halfway through the diary and it hasn’t even been two months since he’s had it. They all range in how descriptive his days were from eleven pages of how Ayato wrecked their monthly allowance to one short page of how he’s planning to do something extremely sinister to Teddy if Kanato keeps stealing his wallet for candy.

Reiji mostly vents in his diary, but it’s so lifeless that you’d think he’s just internally monologuing for the sake of internal monologuing. 

There are pages where he doesn’t. Some pages call back to the time he found an under-the-table seller for a Victorian tea set he’s had his eyes on since autumn. Some pages have these special, translucent note tabs and each color represents a section.

Muted green sticky note tabs for new-found tea recipes, velvet red note tabs indicate a page that should be steered away from (these pages are just pages Reiji wishes he never wrote and doesn’t want to be reminded of the contents within), and blue tabs for any interesting experiences he’s had in the year. 

The red tabs are cut shorter so that they won’t be so obvious at first glance unless the glance was intentional. 

Reiji likes to write with a fountain pen; a writing tool that is loved because of its smoothness, the way it glides on paper, and fluid flow of ink. For colors, dark blue is his go-to. Writing with warm colors makes his eyes strain and anything too saturated is immediately a no. 

For the fountain pen, Reiji uses the Namiki Falcon produced by Pilot with a medium 0.56 mm nib. The brand itself isn’t a luxury brand like Montblanc, but the Namiki Falcon is nothing short of everything a pen nerd gushes over; beautiful, sleek, crisp writing sounds and neat pen lines, what more could you want?

And knowing Reiji, the amount this man writes not only for his diary but for documents, teacher reports, official doctorates, and more is a boatload to work through if the pen he has isn’t built to cushion said workload. 

His diary’s pretty simple. It’s just a regular, black faux leather hardback. He hides it in a hidden compartment pre-built into his study desk. At first, that compartment was a hidden money stash in the event that something horrible ever happened to his savings. But now, it’s not as dusty as it used to be. 

𝐀𝐲𝐚𝐭𝐨

His diary’s been roughed up. Tears, scratches, the binding near collapse, even Subaru’s diary is in better condition than Ayato’s.

For a diary near death, the irony is that Ayato holds it dear. It’s where his vulnerabilities are written down so he can’t afford to lose it no matter what. He doesn’t know if he should feel relieved that the diary’s near its limits. His secrets die along with it, but it’s also been an outlet for him. 

So, what does he do about it? Nothing. If the diary dies, so be it. If it doesn’t, then good for him. 

Ayato usually jots down the name of the teachers who gave him detention that week or rumored upcoming takoyaki places in the shopping district. Unless it’s really something important, he’ll never jot down anything that reveals his emotional state. 

That all changed once he started doing something… interesting. The true main reason he keeps his diary to himself is that in the diary, he started to talk to himself in third person, then answer it in first person. 

Questions people would never ask him are turned into conversation topics for him to daydream and ask himself about. People would call this a self-soothing mechanism, but Ayato calls it self-hype; being the hype man that’s sorely missing in his life.

“Hey! You don’t need them. In fact, you’re better off by yourself. If they won’t appreciate you, scrap ‘em!”

“...Damn right. I’m the best person around and this is how they treat me?! Un-fucking-believable.”

Ayato uses BIC pens. He doesn’t care what he uses to write as long as they do. They’re inexpensive, affordable, come in a pack of 10, and are readily accessible. Plus unlike fancy pens, they’re much more enjoyable to chew on.

Unlike Laito and Kanato, Ayato doesn't write about his past victims nor does have memorabilia from them. His diary is for him and him only. He likes to write about his muscle gain and how basketball tournaments are turning out. He loves to read back past entries because it motivates him to do more and gives him insight into what he needs to do to keep himself entertained. 

He'll never tell anyone, but he laughs at how stupid he is sometimes. Like the time he forgot to throw a toothpick that he used for picking up takoyaki so that week, his backpack absolutely REEKED of the smell. He's the only one allowed to do this, of course.

His diary is a jumbled mess. Loose pages about to surrender to gravity, water crinkles making the cheap ink fade, stains of what seems to be a protein shake hopefully, and nonsensical scribbling bleeding through the paper. 

 He never wrote his name on the front; for fear that it’ll give away who the owner of his diary is. Good thing that he only writes entries inside his room and nowhere else. His hiding spot is behind the iron maiden. He knows how to move it without the iron maiden’s corners screeching and leaving marks on the floor. 

Ayato’s diary is a simple red school notebook. It’s easier to throw away and it’s not like anyone pays attention to notebooks nowadays.

𝐋𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐨

The things he writes in there are extremely worrisome; so many topics that’d give a Pastor cardiac arrest. It took a long while for Laito to get comfortable with the idea of writing his thoughts down and it took even longer to decipher the small fragments of his trauma into something legible. 

Other than that, Laito uses his diary as a notepad of some kind. Writing down movies he needs to watch, incorrect lyrics he’ll search up later and a handful of his poems make their way into the paper. 

Like his Uncle Richter, Laito prefers to use literature as a medium to express. Because of this, he makes sure that his diary is well-hidden. Out of all the Sakamaki brothers, Laito’s hell-bent on making sure that no one is able to get a hold of his diary. If they do, it’ll raise questions not only about Laito but the vulnerable person underneath and he’d rather die than let that get out. 

His diary’s hiding place is underneath the Church grounds. It’s buried in an aluminum box that’s next to his third victim after Hilde came along. This box is located in the Church’s abandoned cemetery where the first roster of Sacrificial brides are buried. 

No gravestones, not even a coffin for the poor women, just patches of uneven dirt to remind the Church where their loyalties with Karlheinz stand. The same place where his facade was birthed is also the same place where everything in that book contradicts what that facade stands for. 

Since the diary’s hiding place is so convoluted, whenever he writes in the thing, it's a monthly ordeal. Sometimes if things get too rough, it’ll be weekly. This only happens if he’s writing about his feelings though. For his daily ventures, that is in another diary. 

This man has two diaries: one for the nasty crises and the other for things that aren’t quite as deep. There is no way to convince Laito that it’s possible to write all the things he needs in one diary. If he can’t separate his vulnerable self from his daily living, it’ll only admit that he’s not as invulnerable as he made himself out to be. 

His daily diary, it’s filled to the brim with information about his current prey. Living situations, financial status, how perceptive they are, and all the things he needs to manipulate his prey are all there. In that diary, there are extremely explicit photos of his previous victims; a keepsake to reminisce about. They’re all quite sexual, but one thing Laito adds to the polaroids are blotches of their blood on the back. It’s truly a wonder how Laito manages to be so emotionally erratic while also being emotionally apathetic.

These polaroids are shown in an order of events: the first polaroid depicting Laito and the victim 'happy', the second polaroid showing Laito and the victim in intimate poses that are either shot from Laito's P.O.V or in the corner of a room, before ending with the third polaroid generally displaying the victim dismembered. These are the general order in which these polaroids are framed.

 

The second and third polaroids are the ones that are varied the most. The victims are never in the same position and Laito rarely uses the same angle twice. 

The third polaroid is by far the most disgusting one as the camera shows how many times Laito has physically cracked open the poor brides. One polaroid shows a poor girl's ribs tearing out of her lower chest, another polaroid has the eyes of a bride nailed to a tall, imposing, wooden crucifix with a note captioned at the bottom: "Dead eyes won't lie, dead eyes won't stray away, dead eyes won't deceive." 

He uses a fine-tip gel pen and the one he mainly uses is the Hi-Tec-C. He enjoys writing with them and they encourage him to write more than he should. Laito likes to write in black or green. They’re pretty to look at and with his pen and handwriting, he’s in love with how his pages look - despite their horrific contents. 

His daily diary’s indented and has beautiful gold accents. It has a black hardcover and the design on it is pretty minimal. As much as he wanted the diary to dazzle, too much attention is never good with such an item. 

His other diary (the crisis diary) has a lock on it. The front and back are untouched and there’s no easy way to say it but it simply looks lifeless. Perhaps the diary looking so forgettable is the greatest strength it bears. No one would expect much from an unassuming decor in his room, right?

𝐊𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐨

Loves to write his thoughts down, but there’s a problem. His mind’s so jumbled with an overabundance of thoughts lingering that in the middle of writing one thought down, he has already abandoned it for a new one. 

Kanato’s diary has incomplete entries and cryptic drawings that provide a small peephole into what goes on inside his head. Drool, dried blood splotches and his own smudged fingerprints carry themselves through the pages. 

His guilty pleasure is imagining what it would’ve been like to be loved unconditionally and transcribing the feeling down in his diary. When he’s not trapped in his senseless daze, the feeling of being loved is both an escape and a pain that provides a gateway to his longing daydreams. 

Kanato uses crayons or a pencil. The sensory feeling of pigmented wax melting into the groves of the paper and crumbling under the pressure reminds him of the first time he made his first collection of wax dolls. Such an innocent writing tool brings back grotesque, vivid memories of when he used crayons to stuff mouths shut when they wouldn’t stop screaming. 

Stuffing their throats full until red tears on the neck’s skin emerged. One crayon, then another, then another, then another, and just like a bloated balloon, pop!

Writing with pencils provides this soothing sound that Kanato absolutely adores. He uses a 2B pencil to write with. It’s not as hard as an HB pencil and the glide is creamier. Yet even with the lead’s softness, it has a resemblance to the sound the HB pencil produces.

He doesn’t write page to page. Most of his writings aren’t connected. It’s all one big puzzle to piece together and unless you’re Kanato, they honestly don’t make sense. Words scattered, sentences repeated, seeing the same drawing from the fourth page re-drawn on the twenty-first page, contradictory statements, it all just perfectly encapsulates Kanato as a person; disorienting, yet you can’t pry your eyes off him. 

There are pages where Kanato just refuses to finish what he was writing at that moment. If he can’t be bothered, then he won’t. But on days his hands don’t tremble at the first memory of his past breakdowns, the page drowns in wax and lead. 

He likes to rip the pages out and turn them into paper dolls for Teddy. 

Kanato doesn’t keep track of the dates which leads to his diary becoming a book in which he channels all his anger and cries in. Nail marks claw at the pastel purple cover and the burnt smell of ashes somehow haunts this diary. Overall, his diary is just a mess. Physically on the outside? No, if something’s gonna represent Kanato, it has to look perfect. But the inside? The horrors one book contains are astonishing.

The diary cover is very cutesy. It’s carefully littered with adorable bear stickers, tiny dessert stickers, and small pops of color that were sketched with crayons. He's the only one out of the Sakamaki brothers where you can tell his diary is his. 

[whilereadingandwalking]

An Evening with Neil Gaiman in Chicago

On a warm night on Friday the 13th, Neil Gaiman strode on stage in the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. A packed crowd held their recently purchased signed books close as he settled in at the podium, dark blue and grey cloud shifting on a curtain behind him. He had to ask the crowd to calm down, before noting that Chicago is one of the first places he did readings back in the day.

Over the course of the evening, Gaiman read “Orange,” requested by Cat Mihos, and a poem about Batman dedicated to Neal Adams; to my delight, he read “The October Tale,” one of my favorite short stories; and he read “The Price,” which he described as a Midwestern story, “a story as much about living here as it is about anything else.” 

He would finish out the night with a reading of “What You Need to Be Warm,” a poem he wrote in his role as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ambassador to usher in a 2019 winter emergency appeal to help refugees. The night held hushed, teary silences, but also many laughs.

@neil-gaiman interspersed readings with answering pre-submitted audience questions—he mentioned early on that our stack of post-its, index cards, and torn-off pieces of paper held the best set of questions he’d seen on his tour.

Here are a couple highlights.

Favorite character to write?

Delirium. “Because she did her own dialogue. And most characters don’t.”

A lot of your works are inspired by religion. How do you do that research?

“I would have loved to have been a practical theologian.” Actually, no, he corrected—he would have liked to be “somebody who professionally made up religions.” The job doesn’t exist, he said. “But it ought to.”

How does he feel about people idolizing his works and teaching them in classrooms?

“Uncomfortable.” Why? “Because I loathe Thomas Hardy.” And he suspects that if he hadn’t been forced to read Hardy at age 12, he maybe could have liked him just fine. So he worries a bit about his works being taught in classrooms.

What advice do you have for working with an artist or illustrator?

He advised asking two questions: What do you like drawing or want to draw that you haven’t gotten to much? and What don’t you like drawing? It can get you into an artist’s good graces, and you also want to be able to try and work with what they’re good at and try to amplify it, push them to be even better. McKean hated drawing big crowds of people—Sam Keith enjoyed it—Jill Thompson doesn’t like cars.

Americans Gods the show gave Laura more personhood (”It did,” he agreed). Will Anansi Boys do the same for its women characters, and how do you feel about updating of your material?

Anansi Boys has wrapped shooting and will be a six-episode miniseries. It will have more of Rosie and Daisy and who they are than in the book, and he’s very proud of this. Neil said at the start that while he would write the first and final episodes, he wanted other writers in the room. Ultimately he worked with four writers of color—two of whom were women—to produce the full product of the Anansi Boys that we’ll get on-screen.

I admit I was personally proud that he answered this one, as it was my question.

What fountain pen and ink are you using right now?

He is using a Pilot 823 and a Namiki Falcon, primarily to sign books. He uses a lot of Pilot inks, because they offer well-packaged, secure sample sizes, which he can buy in a wide variety of wonderful colors, and which then won’t be as much of a liability to the rest of his luggage while traveling on tour.

Who is the coolest person you’ve worked with and why is it Terry Pratchett?

Terry was always certain that he wasn’t cool “and he was terrified that I ‘was.’” But Neil will never forget when Terry called him and said, Do you remember that story you sent me? Are you doing anything with that? And Neil said no, he was very busy with Sandman. “I know what happens next,” Terry said. So they had two options: Neil could sell him the idea, or they could write the book together. 

Of course Neil said that they should write it together. “It was like Michelangelo calling you up and saying ‘Do you want to do a ceiling together?’”

Favorite Pratchett story?

One day after Terry’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, he called up Neil, starting the call (as he always did) with, “Hallo. It’s me.” He was writing a memoir and couldn’t remember something. Could Neil help him? Neil felt a flood of emotion. His good friend, his brilliant friend, couldn’t remember something. “I could be your memory, Terry,” he said internally.

Well, Terry said, do you remember in November 1990, we were on a book tour for Good Omens? And we went to that radio interview and the interviewer had read the cover but hadn’t realized it was fiction, and he asked us what was so interesting about Agnes Nutter and her prophecies, and we told him, and he believed us? And we would see the engineers, and they knew, because they were knocking against the glass to get his attention? And we let him go on for 15 minutes before letting him off the hook? (Neil noted here that Terry was the one who did so, and that he did it very gracefully, making it seem like the host had been in on the joke the whole time.) And remember how we left the studio and walked down the street singing “Shoehorn with Teeth” by They Might Be Giants?

Yes, Neil said. But...what did you need me to remember?

“Was it 30th Street, or 34th?”

When is Sandman coming to Netflix?

He doesn’t know. Netflix will tell us, when they figure it out. “They say they have algorithms and plans, but I think they just go into a dark room with a knife and plunge it into the wall” then turn on the lights and see what calendar date they hit.

Where would your secret lair be, if you had one?

“I’m a traditionalist, so in an extinct volcano above a shark pit.”

[linzani]

Custom Namiki Falcon Resin Fountain Pen

[acaseforpencils]

Rina Piccolo and Part Two Of Rhymes with Orange.

From time to time, A Case for Pencils has had experts on the blog. People at the top of their field outside of greyscale single panel cartoons, whom I admire and want to learn more from myself! I decided to have more people from the fields of newspaper strips, graphic novels, painting… people who inspire me and who I think it would be wonderful for artists to hear from. This week is the second installment of a three part series with the wonderful cartoonists of Rhymes with Orange, Hilary Price and Rina Piccolo. Of course Rina has also done quite a bit of fantastic work outside of Rhymes with Orange, and I am very happy to have her on Case!

Bio: Rina Piccolo’s cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker, Barron's Business Magazine, The Reader’s Digest, Parade Magazine, and more.

Her syndicated daily comic strip, Tina’s Groove ran from 2002 to 2017. Currently, Rina’s cartoons can be seen from Monday to Saturday in the comic feature Rhymes With Orange (in collaboration with Hilary Price, and Syndicated worldwide by King Features Syndicate). Rina is also the co-author of the book Quirky Quarks: A Cartoon Guide to the Fascinating Realm of Physics (Springer, 2016).

Lately, Rina has worked with King Features and Mental Canvas (a graphic-media-design system) to create interactive comics and cartoons that involve 3D environments.

She is also an avid doodler and sketchbook-keeper.

Here’s one of two New Yorker cartoons from long, long ago... my drawing style has changed a little over the years...

Tools of choice:​ I have a few: Definitely can’t live without my daily sketchbook (I’m an obsessive doodler and art-journal keeper), my two fav fountain pens (Namiki Falcon, and Carbon Platinum desk pen), and I should also mention my iPad Pro for the digital stuff I do (including Rhymes With Orange)!

Tool I wish I could use better: I’d like to master Mental Canvas — a software, mentioned above, that I used to build the Rhymes With Orange Interactive cartoon, and other 2d/3d drawing projects (in the pipeline)!

For Non-digital— watercolor. I want to learn how to do it better.

Tool I wish existed: I wish there was a pen that could skywrite like airplanes do. Like, you would literally just draw in the air in front of you, and the drawing would stay up for a few minutes, and then just gradually fade into nothing. The pen would have buttons for different colors, and different nibs/spouts so that the line could be changed from round, flat, puffy, etc. I would call it “the Jet.” Ha ha, I wish. Hey, all you inventors, get to work (Bonus: you could also use it for self-defence)!

Tricks: ​Not anything I’ve been using on a regular basis, but I have used twigs to draw thin lines, and once cut the quill of a pigeon feather so that I could use it as a dip pen (it worked better than I thought it would!) In terms of my daily cartoon work, I’ve developed weird writing rituals that verge on insanity, but a sort of insanity that gets me in the “zone” of writing usable stuff— I don’t want to say what they are because you’ll think I’m crazy. But maybe I am crazy, ha ha. In any case, my rituals have been highly effective over the decades!

Misc: Here’s something random that I’ve learned over the years. In the past, when people would ask me what I was doing over the weekend, I’d say, “I’m working.” To which people would reply, “oh, sorry you have to work,” or “you work too hard.” What they don’t get is that I LIKE spending time creating stuff, and often hate doing the other things people normally associate with weekends. Well, I grew a little, and now take another tack. Now when people ask what I’m doing, I give them specifics — without using the word “work”:  “This weekend I’m going to attempt to paint a watercolor of an underwater scene.” Or I might say, “I’m going to try to draw a holiday village scene with gingerbread men and snowmen.” When I say it that way, the response is always great. People even encourage me on, and wish me luck, and say, ‘have fun!’” The budding artists around me might say, “I wish I had time to do something like that.” So there you go. There are too many takeaways here, I’ll let the readers choose their own. But one thing is for sure, the word “Work” is way too vague to use in a sentence if you want people in your life to understand you better. 

Website, etc. 

RhymesWithOrange.com

RinaPiccolo.com

Twitter

Instagram

Shop

If you enjoy this blog, and would like to contribute to labor and maintenance costs, there is a Patreon, and if you’d like to buy me a cup of coffee, there is a Ko-Fi account as well! I do this blog for free because accessible arts education is important to me, and your support helps a lot! You can also find more posts about art supplies on Case’s Instagram and Twitter! Thank you!

[daffodilsanddoldrums]

Volunteer calligraphy for the church. Thirty of these and certificates later, I'm done!

[dreaminusamin]

Happy birthday, Kako Takafuji!

Today in Japan, January 1st, is also Kako Takafuji’s birthday! Voiced by Rana Morishita (森下来奈), Kako is a 20 year old from Shimane. Practically a personification of the Japanese New Year and it’s traditions, Kako is extremely, extremely lucky. She’s talented at many things, but her one weakness is that she is bad at telling jokes.

Kako loves datemaki (sweetened egg roll) and kurikinton (chestnuts and sweet potato), both traditional Japanese New Year’s dishes. She’s very knowledgeable about the customs of the new year, and frequently mentions the Japanese folktale of the eggplant, the falcon, and Mount Fuji. Kako’s luck is well known among the idols in the production, as they often tend to enjoy her company for their own benefit. She’s close with both Karin Domyoji and Hotaru Shiragiku, both somewhat unlucky girls, as well as Yoshino Yorita, who’s a fellow luck-bringer. Kako is also close with fellow 20 year olds Yuki Himekawa and Miyo Harada. While Kako sometimes struggles to maintain an idol-like personality and behaviour, her versatility and seriousness encourage other idols to do their best. Her name actually contains the kanji for Mount Fuji (富士), hawk (鷹), and eggplant (茄子, usually read as "nasu"). In Japan, the first dream of the New Year is considered prophetic of the dreamer's luck for the rest of the year. The most lucky symbols are said to be Mount Fuji, a hawk, or an eggplant. No wonder Kako’s so lucky!

Kako doesn’t have a solo song yet, but she does sing in Kimi e no Uta (君への詩/A Song For You), Trust me, and Max Beat. Some units that Kako is a part of include Joyful Days (ジョイフルデイズ) with Hikaru Nanjo and Hinako Kita, Harumai Kajin (春舞佳人) with Kaede Takagaki, DAZZLE BLACK with Hijiri Mochizuki and Meiko Namiki, Sakura Shokudani (桜朔夜) with Nao Takamime and Hajime Fujiwara, and Japonesque (ジャポネスク) with Yoshino Yorita and Karin Domyoji. To celebrate Kako’s birthday, enjoy some of your favourite new year’s meals! Happy birthday Kako!

[forgottenbones]

Writing with Pilot/Namiki Falcon Soft Extra-Fine Fountain Pen

[constantpai-blog]

Messing around with my recently bought Namiki Falcon fountain pen! I've heard a lot about it and was still not prepared for how flexible it is. Of course, it won't achieve the thick-and-thin contrast of an actual dip pen, and when not flexing, the nib writes a bit heavier/thicker than I normally like in my fountain pens, but it's nice enough to create some flair in my writing without having to bring out the dip and inks; perfect for writing in cards and things like that!

[inkophile]

Flex Nibs And Ink Characteristics

When it comes to ink, color grabs us first. Whether the jewel-toned dual colors that have emerged in recent years or the traditional single colored inks that have been around forever, it is the property we prize the most. But what else does fountain pen ink have to offer?

Prior to the introduction of inks that sheen and shimmer, more subtle characteristics like shading and outlining (sometimes…