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My second Sailor Jentle Ink arrived today, and I couldn't wait to try it. This is Yama-dori, and it is loaded into an OMAS Ogiva Alba Green with an italic nib. This is kind of a "first look," so I didn't feel it belonged in the Reviews forum. So .... The nib on this pen writes very wet, but Yama-dori, while having excellent lubrication, also permits very good thick/thin line differentiation, which is very important to me. The big surprise was the sheen, although looking back at Saskia's 2010 review of this ink, one commenter ("Mother of Triplets?") remarked on its sheen. If this flow behavior is characteristic of all Sailor Jentle inks, I am in big trouble! David

The other day I realized I had been seeing frequent positive references to Sailor Jentle inks for a long time and had never tried any. So I looked at the color swatches on a few vendors' web sites and ordered a couple colors. Choosing was not easy, because none of the colors appealed that much. Today, the first bottle was delivered - Oku-yama. I think that, because it was described as "Burgundy," and I'm not fond of inks in the purple spectrum, I didn't expect to like it much. But I like it a lot. It fits very nicely into the reddish-brown niche, which is one of my favorites. It shades really nicely. It goes down at the reddish end but dries at the brownish end of the range. It seems to dry pretty fast. It is totally well-behaved. Interestingly, it looks quite different when laid down by a broad nib from when laid down by a narrower nib. The only thing I don't like is that it gets so very dark where lines overlap. I think I will use this a lot. I am now more eager to get the other Jentle ink I ordered, Yama-dori. It might be delivered tomorrow! The larger letters were written with a Reform Calligraph pen fitted with a 1.9mm italic nib. The smaller letters were written with a Nakaya Naka-ai (Un-polished Shu) with a 0.7mm Cursive Italic nib ground by Mr. Mottishaw. (BTW, this ink matches the reddish urushi finishes really nicely.) Thanks all you inkophiles for bringing this ink to my attention! David