As may be well known presently, Sailor produces custom inks for select stores in Japan. Some such store is called "Bungbox". They have a line of about 37 inks, some of which are special edition. Some inks from this collection have become well-known within the FPN community of ink lovers.
Recently, Vanness Pen has started stocking this line of inks. Well they're trying to do so. They get a few in, then sell out. They can't seem to get a large lot of extensive stock in at one time. Currently they only have a few bottles of a couple inks. Perhaps this will change in the future. Also, Bungbox now has an Amazon shop, where they have a few inks and some custom pens. I prefer to use their Japanese site translated by google. I only wish it would translate the buttons! Though perhaps that would make "Add to Cart" far too easy.
I recently ordered from Vanness upon their last shipment some of the inks. One of them is named "88 Green Tea". It is apparently only available during the season when new green tea is available. So it may be that they'll have made a certain number of bottles each year around the same time.
The color is muted yellow-green. At first I wasn't sure that I would like it. Dark, murky greens are the ones I love. But this ink I've found to be very nice. And it works well for me to add notes, annotations, and corrections to a page in dark green.
This is one of the least water-resistant inks that I've tested. The image implies that a decent amount of ink remains behind, and it does, but no where near as much as many others. Water droplets lift ink right off the page. Of course, tea blends completely with water, so the ink captures that quality as well as the appearance.
The inks come in very classy boxes with vintage style bottles.
Sorry about the shadows, but this ended up being the best pic of the lot. It does capture very well the range of tones possible with this ink.
A closeup view at an angle to try and show details of the ink.
Waterfastness test
If you compare this with others I've done, you'll see this ink is much less waterfast or even resistant.
I don't have either, but I was considering Kobe #34 as I like almost anything green tea related. Not any longer though, as I think I'd like this one better.
