Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Japan

Fountains pens are one of those little luxuries which I particularly enjoy. Feeling the smooth flow of ink across the page is a very pleasurable experience, that despite advances in writing technology over the past 100 years, has still not been replaced. I still remember being terribly proud when my teacher at primary school judged my penmanship good enough to graduate from the humble pencil to a fountain pen. I wonder if children in New Zealand still enjoy this? Or do they go straight from pencil to myspace?

Last weekend we were going book shopping in Yaesu, near Tokyo Station when we stumbled upon the Pilot Pen Museum. There are so many little museums scattered around Tokyo that it can be fun to see what finds when out for a wander. The Pilot Pen Station is a Museum and Cafe with a neat display of writing implements – both produced by Pilot as well as outlining the development of writing instruments through out the ages.

There is a cafe on the first floor, non-smoking through-out. It looked pretty standard for a Japanese cafe and we didn’t try what they had on offer. The museum itself is on the second floor – up a staircase which quite ingeniously traces the history of the Pilot Corporation up each of the steps. One of the highlights of the museum was their collection of maki-e fountain pens. I had seen these before in department stores around Tokyo but didn’t know too much about them. They are made using a special lacquer coating process and then have very beautiful individual designs drawn on them. Very Japanese and beautiful to look at.

The museum is open Monday to Friday from 9:30am to 5pm and Saturdays 11am to 5pm, closed Sunday and National Holidays. Admission is free and they also accept Pilot brand fountain pens and the more exclusive Namiki brand pens for repairs. The museum is easy to get to – one minute from the Ginza Line Kyobashi Station (if coming from Shibuya), 3 minutes from the Takaracho Station on the Asakusa Line (if coming from Ueno / Asakusa) and 8 minutes walk from the Yaesu Exit of JR Tokyo station.

Having visited the Pilot Pen Station museum I had a bit of a poke around on the internet to see what I could find. Pilot themselves don’t have much of an English website. But I found an interesting interview over at the perennial purveyors of pulsating missives – pingmag – with The God of Fountain Pens. As well as that, I found an informative page about the pen museum at Tokyo Fountain Pen Scene (complete with map). The person responsible for that site also sells fountain pens on ebay – here is his page. He seems to have a good selection of pens for sale. (I have no relation with what he is selling btw).

Finally Pentrace East has quite an indepth guide to fountain pen culture in Tokyo. I didn’t realise there was so much to do related to fountain pens in Tokyo – that page has recommendations for a couple of days of pen related sightseeing in the capital alone!