Japanese Stationery Holy Grail Products

Welcome to my Japanese stationery holy grail favorites video! 

00:00 Intro 
01:28 Pen Case - Milloo Rec Pen Case 
04:21 Notebook - Maruman Utoka 
07:10 Gel Pen - Sarasa Clip 3C
14:42 Highlighter - Pilot Kire-na
16:10 Upscale Highlighter - Filare Direction
19:00 Brush Pen - Pentel Fude Touch
21:26 Planner Accessories - Midori Printable Stamp
24:02 Chiratto Page Tabs
28:20 Whiteboard Marker - Pilot Board Master
30:00 Favorite Pen Hack - Frixion Ball Knock Zone
30:45 Pilot Juice Classic Colors
34:11 Favorite Travel Hack - Uni Style Fit Series

 

The Following is an AI-generated transcript, if anything seems weird, check the video:


Hi everyone! Today, I wanted to do a video where I chat with you about my Holy Grail stationery products. I have access to pull whatever I want from the Tokyo Pen Shop warehouse whenever I need it. This puts me in an interesting position, as I can evaluate the products I find myself pulling for over and over again. These are the products I use repeatedly and also give away because I know they're reliable and I’ll enjoy using them. Even though I have access to so many different products, there are a few that I truly consider Holy Grails for me.

I really wanted to make a video where I share these with you. As I go through each category, I’d love to hear about your Holy Grails as well. Let’s start with pencil cases. I will always go back to the OG, the milloo Rec. I’ve done videos before where I’ve explained the history of Tokyo Pen Shop and this pen case. I started by using the milloo Estia, and I still often use that, but the milloo Rec is the one I go back to again and again.

This pen case was actually designed for us, which is probably why I find it the most convenient. I love everything about it. I can easily fit about three dozen pens in the milloo Rec, and I love how easy it is to throw in a bag. It's soft and squishy, and I just adore it.

The only exception I’d make is if you tend to use a lot of really long pens, like the Tombow brush pens. Those are a bit too long to comfortably fit in this case. You’d almost have to put them at a diagonal to make them work. So, in that case, I’d recommend something like the milloo Brick or, as mentioned before, the milloo Estia. This one here is filled with toiletries, but you can get a sense of its length compared to the milloo Rec.

That’s the only situation where I’d say the milloo Rec might not be for you. If you don’t use long pens, though, the milloo Rec is absolutely perfect. If you enjoy corralling or organizing your collection, or if you like to travel with it, definitely try the milloo Rec. It also makes a great toiletry case when you’re traveling or at home in your bathroom. It’s my Holy Grail, and it can’t be replaced in my mind.

Okay, next I want to talk about notebooks. I’ve talked a lot about the Utoka, which is by Maruman. Maruman makes Mnemosyne, so you might be familiar with some of their products. They have really nice paper, and their GSM (grams per square meter) tends to range from 70 to 85. I’ve found that the sweet spot for me is probably around 70 GSM, and I absolutely love it.

I always have Utokas in use, and here are the ones I currently have going. The paper is just so nice, and I love the soft grid. I find that this reporter size they make is perfect for fitting next to your keyboard while you work. The pages tear off cleanly thanks to a really nice perforation.

The weight of the paper, at 70 GSM, is just perfect. Let me show you this, although it’s a bit hard to describe without sounding like a crazy person. The GSM of this paper is such that you barely feel the texture. You know how you can sometimes feel a little ghosting through the paper? I love it when it’s just slightly raised, but you’re not experiencing bleed-through. You just get the nice texture.

Another thing I love is that, generally, when I use this paper, I end up loving the way my notes look. It works really well with a nice ink and highlighter combo, and the paper still looks great. Anyway, I absolutely love the Utoka—it’s a Holy Grail for me.

Now, let’s talk about pens—my favorite subject! The Sarasa 3C, the Sarasa Clip 3C, has completely blown me away this year. The original lineup came out at the very beginning of 2024. By the way, I’m definitely going to put the Sarasa 3C in my “Best of 2024” set because I don’t think it’s just the best of 2024—I think it’s one of the best pens ever. I love it so much that I’ve forgiven Zebra for discontinuing my beloved Prefill multi-pen. Do you remember the Zebra Custom Multi, called the Prefill? You know you’re really OG if you do!

Let me show you the original lineup of the Sarasa 3C and some of the limited body lineups. Obviously, the reason I love this pen so much is because of the ink and how it writes, but the packaging and barrel design are also very important to me—and probably to many of you watching this video.

I have so many Sarasa 3C pens here, so many options! The original lineup includes barrel colors that are part of the standard collection. These colors are available all the time, and the original lineup comes in 0.4 mm or 0.5 mm. You know I love fine tips, so I prefer the 0.4 mm. It uses the Sarasa Clip ink, so let me swatch it for you. Let me zoom in.

Here is my Sarasa 3C with black ink, and I’m sure this is a 0.4 point. The Sarasa blue is, I think, an underrated ink color. It always appears like a deeper blue than I expect, and I just think it’s beautiful. It’s such a lovely shade. And then there’s the red, which is great too.

Anyway, I love how this pen feels, how it writes, and how the ink looks. My notes always look great with this pen, and I’m always happy with my work papers, whether I’m writing or taking notes.

Don’t sleep on the Sarasa 3C if you haven’t tried it yet! Seriously, it’s really good. You’ve seen the original lineup and the swatches, so now I’ll show you the two limited edition lineups. I think we still have all of these right now.

The first limited edition lineup featured clear body colors. I forget exactly what they called it, but I’ll link everything below. All three colors are so pretty—the clear pink, clear blue, and yellow. Normally, I’m not that excited about yellow, but this shade of yellow is gorgeous. I love them!

Recently, they released another limited edition color lineup. My absolute favorite from the new limited edition is this one—probably the soft beige. It’s a neutral pink-beige color, and it’s just fabulous. I also love the Coral Pink. There’s also a color called Turquoise Charcoal, which I think is a charcoal brown. Then, we have Forest Green. It’s hard to tell on camera, but the color is unique. It’s like a vintage green with a touch of blue in it. Does that make sense? And then there’s Leaf Green, a yellow-green shade.

That’s the latest limited edition lineup. I’m guessing they’ll just keep coming out with more limited edition color options, which is very exciting because I love this pen. Seriously, if you haven’t tried it, you need to. I even gave one to everyone who works at my son’s school because I felt so strongly that they should all have one!

So, that’s my Holy Grail gel multi-pen.

Let’s talk about Holy Grail highlighters. This is another product from this year, 2024. I recently did a whole video on this product, the Pilot Kire-na. Since I did a full video on it, I’m not going to do another long swatching session. Please check out the video [linked here] if you’d like to see more. The takeaways from that video are basically that the colors are way more unique than you expect them to be, and the highlighter itself is just so nice. It’s so easy to control, highlights so neatly, and doesn’t smear almost any ink you try to pair it with. To me, this is one of the sleeper products of 2024. People probably can’t realize how awesome it is until they try it, and I want you to try it. It’s so good.

Now, if you’re giving a highlighter as a gift, I have a different Holy Grail highlighter, and that is the Zebra highlighter that comes in the really fancy barrel, the Zebra Filare Direction. This highlighter is so nice. Let me tell you a couple of things I really like about it. First of all, it is a super giftable highlighter because the barrel is metal. In fact, I’m going to give one of these to my son’s teacher this year. It’s a refillable highlighter, and the barrel is part of the Filare series. It is so nice and elegant, just looks so good. You know how highlighters usually look and feel kind of cheap? This one, though, feels really luxurious. If you’ve got to highlight in meetings and want to impress people, get this highlighter. Seriously, it’s so nice, and again, it’s refillable.

Another thing I would say about this highlighter that I really appreciate is the wedge of the highlighter tip. It’s at least half as narrow as you’re used to, so it allows for much more precise highlighting. It’s just so nice. I absolutely love it. You can get it pre-filled with either pink or yellow ink. I don’t believe they’ve come out with any other refill colors for it, except for those two. It would be kind of exciting if they did, but still, this highlighter is so good. If you want to gift a highlighter but you’re not sure if the person is into Japanese stationery or whatever, but you still want to impress them, this is my go-to.

Okay, now we’re done with highlighters. Let me talk for just a second about brush pens. The Pentel Fude Touch is such an awesome brush pen, especially if you are a beginner. It is so easy to control and is great for practicing some basic brush lettering. It comes in so many colors, and they keep coming out with more great colors. My Holy Grail brush pen would be the Pentel Fude Touch. I just pulled at least 30 colors right here, and the colors are just so good. I can’t quite remember if this is the complete set or not, but I’ll put up on the screen how many there currently are. I just want to show you how nice they are.

Instead of being an actual brush tip, this pen has a nylon tip that simulates a brush pen, but it’s on the firmer side, so it’s much easier to control and use. If you’re doing smaller lettering, rather than big lettering, this is such a great pen. I find it so good for practice too. You can really get a lot of control of your pen. I can’t talk and write at the same time—it’s always a problem for me—so I’ll just stop talking for a minute. But in any case, they’re just so good. They’re so good.

Let’s talk about some of the planner supplies that I pull over and over again. I’m sure I’ve talked about this in videos before. This is the Midori Paintable Stamp in the months. All it is is a self-inking stamp that has all the months. Instead of doing that, I should just show you. I use this—there’s almost nothing I use as much as this in my planners. I use it constantly. I use it in my TN, I use it in my ring planners, I use it in my bound journals. I’m constantly using this. Maybe that’s a little weird because you’re probably thinking, “Why don’t you just write the month with your pen, lady?”

I just love using this. I love using undated planners, undated printables. If I put the month at the top of my page, or my calendar page, or my notebook page, I just like it to look a little more legit. I love this stamp so much. Obviously, it comes in many more variants, and they even have different stamp styles, so I’ll link some of those below so you can check them out. Maybe there’s one that you would use more than the month one.

This is what it looks like in the packaging, and it does come with the first refill that you need. After hundreds and hundreds of stamps, let me see—I can’t quite remember how many. Oh, 2,000. Supposedly, you can use this 2,000 times before you need to refill the ink, but it is refillable, and you can buy the ink refills at our store.

Other planner Holy Grails that I use over and over again are—let me see, okay. I have these—but let me find them in the package. Okay, so the Midori Chiratto Page Tabs, specifically the mini version. They’re narrow, rather than being taller. These are so good. One thing I like about them is that you can easily remove them if you need to. They come with the months marked on them, although I use them for more than just the months, and I can kind of get into that in a minute. But they come with four sets of numbers, so there’s a lot in the pack. Also, they have the unmarked ones, which are nice too, and I think the colors are great. The one I’m currently using—I’ll show you in a minute—again, the thing about these tabs is that they’re one of the products I’ve pulled dozens and dozens of times. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used these Midori Chiratto Page Tabs. They’re so good.

So, actually, hold on one second. Let me show you a live example. Okay, so this is the Passport TN, and this is what I’m using the tabs for. I was setting this up to keep track of the number of weeks for a particular reason (which I won’t get into, but it’s kind of boring). You can see how they barely stick out at all, which I really like. They’re not going to bump up against all your stuff and cause a mess to your tabs. If you want to, as you get to the various weeks, you can easily remove this. You don’t have to keep it on there. So you can keep track of where you are that way too. You can keep them all on if you want, but you don’t have to because, like I said, they remove so cleanly.

So, I love that so much. I don’t know—it’s sort of hard to explain how useful I find these, but I think they just look so good mostly because they’re just so subtle. They only stick out about 2 and 1/12 mm, so they’re really, really good. If you’re a planner person that likes month tabs, or if you think you’d like the colored ones (which don’t have the month on them), you should really try these. They’re so good.

Alright, I think that covers most of the planner things I wanted to share. We’re done!

Okay, just a couple more categories before I wrap this video up. One of the things I want to talk to you about is my Holy Grail whiteboard marker. Now, not everyone uses a whiteboard marker, so I’ll try to make this quick. But if you're just used to, like, Expo, oh my God, you have to try the Pilot Board Masters. They have a couple of really amazing features.

In addition to the ink just being so bold and beautiful, and there being a lot of different tip style options (you can get wedge, bullet tip, or even a really fat, thick tip), the tips are also replaceable, which is kind of amazing. So is the ink unit. It’s not nearly as wasteful as your average whiteboard marker where you have to throw away the whole thing. With these, you can replace the tip and the refill, meaning the majority of the barrel and the cap can be reused, which is awesome. They’re just so good. Once you start using them, you’ll think other whiteboard markers suck.

Okay, just two more categories—bear with me. I left mine at home, but I wanted to talk about the, who knows what this is even called—the Frixion Ball Knock Zone. Specifically, I really like the marble body. I just opened a new one to have at work since I always leave mine at home.

But basically, I completely love the way the body of this pen feels. I think it looks nice; it’s more weighted toward the bottom, so it’s so comfortable to write with. Let me move this out of the way—it’s distracting me. But I don’t actually always want it filled with the erasable ink because I like this pen so much. I hack it with another one of my Holy Grails. So this is interesting. Let me see if I can explain this in a way that makes sense.

This is the Pilot Juice Classic Colors. But originally, it came out in the Smoothie Colors limited edition lineup, and it was the mint smoothie color. Let me show you. So, it was the mint smoothie color, and I loved it so much. I don’t know if you’re going to be able to tell how beautiful the color is in person, but I loved this color so much that I hoarded some, since it was a limited edition. I knew it was going to be one of the few inks I actually run out of because I knew I would be using it that much.

Then, like, I don’t know, maybe a year after that Smoothie Colors lineup, they released it as part of the Juice Classic Colors series, and they changed the name to Classic Green. But it’s the same as Mint Smoothie, and I was so freaking happy because I love the color so much. And I love that I can put it in my fancy Frixion Ball Knock Zone pen barrel and use it like that. It’s like my favorite hack. So this is now called Classic Green, and I’m so happy to see all my favorite things come together.

Another one that you should not sleep on is this Classic Green. And if you want to really take it to the next level, put it in the Friction Ball Knock Zone marble body. Trust me, it’s so good. One of my absolute favorite combos.

Now, some people will ask me, “Can you erase the ink?” because, you know, you put it in a Friction, and it’s got the... no, no, no, no. You’ve taken the erasable ink out. Yes, you still have your eraser up here, but who cares? It just looks like it’s part of the pen. It’s okay.

But some people have trouble getting over the fact that I put a non-erasable ink in an erasable pen body. My brain’s fine with it, so maybe yours will be too.

One final thing I want to say: because they took away my beloved Sarasa Select, and I’m really happy with the Sarasa Clip, I’m managing it. But that basically leaves the Uni Style Fit as my favorite custom multi. This is one of my traveling hacks. If I’m packing really quickly and I’m overwhelmed and don’t want to take the time to pick out what pens and inks I’m taking on my trip with me, I do this every time. I grab a Uni Style Fit barrel—this one is a foggy pink five-color holder with the rose gold accents. It’s really pretty.

But I just grab this off the shelf; it’s not one I have currently going. Then I wanted to show you... I grab a whole complete refill set. Aha! I found it. Okay, so what I do is grab a full bundle of 38 colors, then I grab a barrel, and basically, I’m fitting 16 ink colors into this super small, skinny, flat barrel. Look how flat this is! Basically, 16 pens would take up so much more room than this.

So this is my hack. I know it’s going to be really good ink, and I’m going to love the way it writes. I’ve pulled so many of these that it just has to be a Holy Grail for me.

I apologize if you can hear my needy dog whining. It’s Petra. Petra would like me to finish up this video so I can take her on a walk.

I hope you liked learning about my Holy Grails, and I will talk to you all soon. Don’t forget to tell me what your Holy Grails are—I really want to know. Okay, bye.

Regresar al blog