Sailor Joyful 2 Tanigawadake Blue

[Kanayama]

My first ink review.
This is 谷川岳ブルー　"Tanigawadake blue," an ink produced by Sailor for the Joyful Honda 2 stationery shop in Ota-shi, Gunma-ken, Japan, as part of their "Gunma Great Mountain" series.
I chose this ink as my first to try as it is named after a mountain, Tanigawadake, near my hometown.
I apologize in advance for my bad penmanship. I am trying to make my English hand-writing better.
Paper: Graphilo A5 notebook. Pen: Noodlers Konrad

 

Text:

Tanigawadake Blue

Sailor Joyful-2 Gunma series

This is a nice dark blue-black that reminds me a lot of "Quink" blue-black(Note: I made a mistake here. This ink reminds me of an old formulation of Quink. I finally finished my last cartridge and the new formulation is much lighter. Maybe the old cartridges had some water evaporate out of them and were more concentrated.)

As a Sailor gentle ink it has a nice even flow and offers good lubrication. There is no feathering on high-quality paper, such as this "Graphilo" notebook, but it can feather on cheap copy paper. Dry time is around 10~15 seconds but is faster on more absorbent paper. On this paper there is obvious shading,even some sheen where the ink pools (but not much.) No bleedthrough but some ghosting on absorbent paper. The ink resists water a little, more so on cheap paper.
Final thoughts,
I like this color quite a bit. It is much darker than Sailor's Sei Boku blur-black and has a nice professional look while providing some shading for fun. ~Kanayama
Pen-Noodler's Konrad.

 

Here it is on Tomoe River cream

 

 

And here it is compared to a few different blueish colors.

Tanigawadake blue is named after Tanigawa-peak in northern Gunma. It is a famous place for star-gazing and the blue reminds me of a dark evening sky.


This ink is available at the Joyful Honda store in Ota-shi, Gunma-ken, Japan. It is also available on the Joyful-2 Rakuten online store.

Some people have asked why inks like these are not more widely available. According to the manager of Joyful-2 the Gunma ink was originally designed by a local artist who made the ink at Sailor's "ink workshop." The artist made many colors and would order refills so often that the store manager and Sailor decided to work with her to create a series of inks that would be on sale permanently. That way she could get ink quickly and the store would have a special product. This ink, and the others in the Joyful-2 store, have been available since 2009. Unfortunately they were never popular until last year (If you had gone into the store at this time last year you could have bought all of the colors in the old-style diamond bottle).

As we all know, Sailor shop-special inks have become very popular. But they are often hard to get and sometimes only available at the physical stores. Joyful-2 hopes that the ink will encourage people to come into their store in order to buy the ink. This type of "regional product" is very popular in Japan. Many people like to travel to different places and bring back mementos of those places that aren't available anywhere else. My fountain pen friends have made special trips to Sapporo and Kobe to buy the inks available there. Many older people enjoy this type of rarity. For people who enjoy it, it makes travel special.
Only in the last 8 years or so, since Amazon has come to Japan, has this idea gotten less popular. I know that it is frustrating to not be able to attain something for such a silly reason. But I hope frustrated people can understand that many people used to like the difficulty.
Fortunately Joyful Honda 2 realizes that many people will not be able to get to their store (It is in the middle of no-where up in Gunma. It is a 20-min drive from the nearest station which means an expensive taxi ride, a long and expensive bus ride, or an hour long walk.) They have been selling these inks on Rakuten and are very happy that their inks have become the number one seller on that website.

I hope this review has helped. I will do my best to improve all aspects of future reviews so feel free to offer constructive comments!
Thank you.

[visvamitra]

Nice review and a lot of interesting informations, thank you.

[lapis]

Nice review and welcome to the crew! The first thing I thought of too, was that it reminded me of the Quink blue-black, although this Sailor job is of course much darker but better yet, less turquoise-grey. Is it also more water-resistant?

 

Mike

[Tas]

Congratulations and thank you !

More like this please. Excellent work.

[Kanayama]

Here are some pictures I took for a water resistance comparison to Quink blue black.
The paper used is Maruman notebook loose-leaf paper. A bit higher in quality than standard ink-jet/copy paper but much more absorbent than the Graphilo notebook I used for the review.

The Tanigawadake blue was in an Ohto Tasche pen with a "fine" nib while the Quink blue black was in my old parker 75 with an XF nib.

 

The two before water

 

And after being dunked under running water for about 10 seconds.

 

 

The Quink is still there, barely, while the Tanigawadake is pretty legible albeit a bit feathery.

 

I really remember Quink being darker. Like it is in the photo (I only have a smart-phone camera these days, my apologies for the bad image quality.) In real life the quink is much brighter and the Tanigawadake is more blue than black.
But now that I think about it I have been using Quink cartridges that my father-in-law bought sometime in the early 80's. He went down to Tokyo and bought a case of them since they were so hard to get in Gunma and I've been using them ever since he gave me his '75. I only recently ran out and the new Quink cartridges I bought don't seem to have the same deep color. Maybe the formula changed or maybe some of the water had escaped from the older cartridges. I may switch the '75 over to this Sailor ink...

[swanjun]

Thank you for the review! I am currently using this ink in a Pilot Custom 74 with a broad nib, and it's very nice indeed. It produces some red sheen, too.

 

FPNへようこそ!

[haruka337]

Thank you for the review.

 

I've been mulling over this ink for a while now, but your review has proven it's not for me.

 

Thanks again and keep them reviews comin'! XcD

[AndyYNWA]

Thanks for the review!

 

I think i like this ink... But I'm not really sure...

Edited July 23, 2016 by AndyYNWA

[rudyhou]

a nice blue black.

[amberleadavis]

Great work, thank you for sharing.

[Barkingpig]

Thank you for a very NICE review of an ink that was new to me. I also appreciate your explanation behind the concept of "Shop" inks & it indeed makes sense for attracting customers to find a unique in, "only available" @ the specific store. I appreciate the cultural aspect of enjoying an ink as reminiscence of an enjoyable place or adventure. I know Americans do not always consider the cultural differences between countries merchandising & I thank you for your helpful comments.

[mmg122]

Excellent review of a very interesting ink. This is the 3rd Joyful-2 ink I've seen reviewed lately on FPN and they are all quite nice. Thank you Kanayama for taking the time and effort to share this ink with us.

 

Mary