Fountain Pens for Beginners

This is a great video from Jetpens.com about beginner fountain pens. I personally have a Pilot Kakuno, two Pilot Metropolitans, and a Lamy Safari. In addition, I have several Jinhao pens, but the Pilots and Lamy are much nicer, and a lot more pleasurable to write with. At first, I didn’t like the Metropolitan, but now it might just be my favorite (medium nib). Funny how that worked out.

Here’s a photo of some hiragana practice. The first line is the Kakuno (fine nib), second is the Metropolitan (medium nib), and third is the Safari (broad nib). I wrote this in a plain Mead notebook, so there’s a bit of feathering.

"Practice Ink" Cedar Park, 2018
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.2, 1/60 sec, ISO3200
“Practice Ink” Cedar Park, 2018

I love using my fountain pens for Japanese practice. It makes it a lot more fun!

Ehōmaki

"Ehōmaki" Cedar Park, 2018
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.2, 1/80 sec, ISO3200
“Ehōmaki” Cedar Park, 2018

こんばんは。How’s it going?

Tonight we celebrated Setsubun by eating our traditional Ehōmaki, or “lucky direction sushi”. You are supposed to eat the whole uncut maki sushi in silence, while facing the lucky direction, which happens to be south-southeast this year.

Of course, we have extra sushi, so that gets sliced into pieces which we can enjoy after we finish our rolls. Yum!

"Sushi" Cedar Park, 2018
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.2, 1/100 sec, ISO2500
“Sushi” Cedar Park, 2018

I was looking forward to eating Ehōmaki all day long, and it didn’t disappoint. 😀

I hope you had a nice Saturday!

おやすみ

Happy Friday!

"Washi?" Cedar Park, 2018
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.2, 1/125 sec, ISO3200
“Washi?” Cedar Park, 2018

Today, just a photo. Honestly, this is one of those late-night “what am I going to take a photo of?” snaps. But we do have a bunch of (I think) cool things around the house. 😀 Like a squirrel washi tape dispenser. 🐿️

And today is my father’s birthday. 80 years young! 🎂🎉 Happy Birthday, Dad!

Anyway, we made it to the weekend – Yay!

Burger Lunch

"VW" Austin, 2018
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/5.6, 1/240 sec, ISO200
“VW” Austin, 2018

こんばんは。How’s it going?

Today I met a friend at a burger place for lunch. I don’t go out too often, or eat lunch at all, so it was really nice to get out of the office! Plus catching up with a buddy over burgers and $1 beers is fun. Thursdays at Hat Creek are when draft beer is only a buck, so it got pretty crowded at lunch. Luckily my friend and I beat the rush by arriving a little early (11:30am) so there was no waiting. Yay! And the burger was pretty good, and the fries were excellent. I’ll be going back for sure!

"Burger, Fries, and Beer" Austin, 2018
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/5.6, 1/125 sec, ISO1600
“Burger, Fries, and Beer” Austin, 2018

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already come to February, isn’t it? 2018 is flying by… soon it will be summer. 😀🌞

I hope you had a nice Thursday!

おやすみ