I had come across this great little store in Kamakura, Japan that had some wonderful items. Really neat types of pens and some great and different designs for some of the notebooks they had. One had this green leafy cover on a light, grass green background and a different one had the paper almost looking like a 3D illusion of waves. Both were good, but the waves looked the best, even though it was the hardest to write on.

I am not sure what colors of ink you like but I really like the basic blue and black, with maybe a good red or green thrown in. One to highlight and mark out other peoples mistakes and one to doodle with. Yes, the red for highlighting and the green for doodling. Some of the best pens I have found have been in Japan. I am not talking about the hundred dollar collector pens some people go in for but the regular use two or three dollar pens. One of the best is the Uni-ball Signo. Works great, writes great and is easy and comfortable to use. It comes in different colors and is one of my favorite pens. Other than that I just tend to stumble across ones that either look interesting or have some sort of appeal to me. You can pretty much find pensanywhere. I can’t say what kind of appeal because it really changes daily, or depending on what I am thinking about.

The notepads are a bit different than the pens, or mechanical pencils. With notepads I am really only interested in design. If it catches my eye and looks pretty interesting or cool then I am all for it. The best designs are the nature or abstract ones. All right, got to do other stuff but if given time I can talk about stationary stuff for a while.

I would go out of my way for a new store that might have something different, something new and neat. I have ended up with a fairly nice collection of pens and notebooks or paper pads. There is just something about it that draws me, and no pun intended. Some people can spend a long time browsing clothes or shoes, things like that, but I can spend a comfortable hour or so browsing pens and notebooks. I hope that doesn’t make me strange, because I am sure there is a bunch of other stuff that would do that. Besides, I have found some really interesting stores in some really interesting parts of the world. There is a lot of stuff out there.