I treated myself. Strictly speaking actually I treated myself 12 months back but did have to pay an expected large tax/duty bill last week. Today the pen finally arrived and I shot my first unboxing video for a bit of fun and to mark the occasion.

For those who are not aware, Hakase is a street front workshop based pen maker out in the Tottori prefecture of Japan. Ryo Yamamoto is the third generation of artisans, not only making the pens but also hand tuning the nibs. Depending on the size of the pen you can choose from a selection of Sailor and Pilot nibs, all Hakase branded (I believe he is the only non-Pilot/Namiki pen maker to use their nibs with his own branding).

Ordering was a little time consuming as you have to submit a number of hand written forms and links to videos of you writing with a number of pens. From this Yamamoto-san can work out the angle and rotation you use to hand tune your nib. If you can get to the workshop (appointment only) then he can more accurately gauge your requirements and also fine tune on pen collection.

In the video you will also notice two bottles of ink. These are sepia. Real sepia, not the ‘pick a brown dye/pigment’ that the ink manufactures do. Apparently it took around 10 years of research to create the ink without it blocking fountain pen feeds. More can be found here on the Hakase website, click on a bottle for the history behind it.

And now the video. Apologies for the rough nature of it, this is the first unboxing I have filmed with the result of having to repeatedly put the camera down. Maybe in time I can work out how to use some film editing software to neaten it.