Yama-Dori - Sailor Jentle Ink

[Masque]

Needs more blue (with only a touch of green) or the other way around.

 

 

Iroshizuku Tsuki-Yo may be just what you are after.

[Charles Skinner]

I bought a bottle of Sailor Yama-Dori ink not long ago, and after using it for a couple of weeks, I never could see what all of the excitement was about. This morning, I put it in a different pen, and what do you know? I like it much, much better now! Just a reminder that "it takes two to tango," can apply to inks and pens! For some reason, ----- unknown to this "country boy," -----some inks just seem to like some pens more than others!

 

​I am sure that you have had a similar experience at one time or the other.

 

C. S. ("You don't know lonely until it is chiseled in stone!)

[lapis]

I bought a bottle of Sailor Yama-Dori ink not long ago, and after using it for a couple of weeks, I never could see what all of the excitement was about. This morning, I put it in a different pen, and what do you know? I like it much, much better now! Just a reminder that "it takes two to tango," can apply to inks and pens! For some reason, ----- unknown to this "country boy," -----some inks just seem to like some pens more than others!

 

​I am sure that you have had a similar experience at one time or the other.

 

C. S. ("You don't know lonely until it is chiseled in stone!)

 

Food for thought, Charles. And/or, "Amen!"

[Honeybadgers]

great review as always - though your pictures really don't do enough to show this ink's absolutely bonkers red sheen.

 

For fountain pen newbies, this is one of the first inks I recommend everyone buy. It's a professional color, it's got just outrageously good manners in any pen, on any paper, and when you use it on the good stuff it just sheens like a madman in even a fine japanese nib. The color is jewel-like, almost like turquoise stone crossed with a fire opal. One of the things people don't understand about fountain pens is that ink is a huge part of it. People only think in three colors - black, blue, and red. And even waterman blue isn't good enough to really show people what a spectacular range of color is opened by switching to a fountain pen. The struggle is finding something work appropriate. For me, this ticks all the boxes, since it's also one of the most bleed and feather-proof inks in history (right up there with noodlers X feather)

 

The price is also right on - really boutique performance at a bargain. The only thing that lets this ink down is the frankly retarded bottle design. This is definitely the worst designed bottle of any ink in my collection. Sailor really needs to redesign their bottles.

 

If this ink had any water resistance this would be my #1 ink of all time.

 

This is one of the top ten inks of all time. I honestly haven't run into a sailor jentle ink that wasn't pretty much perfect. This, souten, tokiwa matsu and oku-yama are four mandatory inks for everyone's collection

Edited October 9, 2017 by Honeybadgers

[Karmachanic]

great review as always - though your pictures really don't do enough to show this ink's absolutely bonkers red sheen.

 

For fountain pen newbies, this is one of the first inks I recommend everyone buy. It's a professional color, it's got just outrageously good manners in any pen, on any paper, and when you use it on the good stuff it just sheens like a madman in even a fine japanese nib. The color is jewel-like, almost like turquoise stone crossed with a fire opal. One of the things people don't understand about fountain pens is that ink is a huge part of it. People only think in three colors - black, blue, and red. And even waterman blue isn't good enough to really show people what a spectacular range of color is opened by switching to a fountain pen. The struggle is finding something work appropriate. For me, this ticks all the boxes, since it's also one of the most bleed and feather-proof inks in history (right up there with noodlers X feather)

 

The price is also right on - really boutique performance at a bargain. The only thing that lets this ink down is the frankly retarded bottle design. This is definitely the worst designed bottle of any ink in my collection. Sailor really needs to redesign their bottles.

 

If this ink had any water resistance this would be my #1 ink of all time.

 

This is one of the top ten inks of all time. I honestly haven't run into a sailor jentle ink that wasn't pretty much perfect. This, souten, tokiwa matsu and oku-yama are four mandatory inks for everyone's collection

 

 

Oh. So it's all your fault. Nice little square bottles with a 40% mark up.

Edited October 8, 2018 by Karmachanic

[Honeybadgers]

Sailor just can't stop themselves. they just bumped the price again to over $20 a bottle. I still think the ink is worth it, but the bottle design is so terrible that if they really want to keep me buying, they need to redesign that turd.

[A Smug Dill]

Sailor just can't stop themselves. they just bumped the price again to over $20 a bottle.

Do you mean over US$20 for a 20ml bottle of ink in the Shikiori line, from US-based retail outlets?

 

You North Americans are lucky, because Canada and USA are almost always included whenever Rakuten Global Market has a free shipping promotion, whereas Australia is often excluded. It's doing one such promotion right now, and you can buy the 20ml bottles for ¥1080 (approximately C$12.53 or US$9.63 today) each – and even cheaper if you can find a seller that doesn't slap on the equivalent of 8% local consumption tax in Japan as a 'handling fee' for international orders – from participating sellers, assuming you meet the minimum eligible spend. Actually, you can still get the 50ml bottles of doyou, nioisumire and fujimusume now for that price, but 50ml bottles of yamadori are sold out at any price from all sellers on RGM (including those that won't ship orders outside of Japan directly).

[A Smug Dill]

I have finally opened my first bottle of Sailor yamadori ink, and filled my Sailor 'Proske' (effectively a 1911 Large demonstrator) pen that is fitted with a Zoom nib with it. It seems to be giving me a lot of hard starts, even if I just pause for 30 seconds between two bits of writing, in a way that Sailor nioisumire ink in the same pen never did. The colour is pleasing enough, and yes, it shows sheen on Rhodia paper just as nioisumire does, but so far my feelings towards this ink is, "So what?" I'm almost sorry that I just snapped up a couple of days ago the last 50ml bottle I found offered on Rakuten at the old price, yet to be shipped.

[Honeybadgers]

Interesting, I've never found either of my two bottles of Yama dori to hard start. The only slightly weak ink I've tried is oku yama, which can be prone to feathering, but everything else in the jentle line has had perfect manners

 

I meant over $20 for a 50mL bottle. Sailor needs to get their bottle situation squared. They can charge iroshizuku money with an iroshizuku quality bottle. Not without it.

[A Smug Dill]

The only inks that Sailor still packages in 50ml bottles these days are the black, blue-black and blue (dye or pigment inks), as far as I'm aware. Are you talking about those?

[Honeybadgers]

I was referring to the jentle line, but my knowledge of what is available is based on what I can still get on Amazon since Sailor really, REALLY doesn't like to play with most US retailers. Since you read japanese I'll trust your judgement that sailor isn't selling their more premium "standard" (i.e. not bungubox or the like) in proper bottles anymore.

 

At least I'm stocked up on my favorite colors for a while, I have 3 50ml bottles each of souten, yama dori, oku yama and tokiwa-matsu.

Edited November 16, 2018 by Honeybadgers

[A Smug Dill]

At the risk of being accused of arguing semantics again, the Sailor Jentle line of inks did not consist only of the 16 colours in the Shikisai range; the 'basic' colours of black, blue-black, blue, red, etc. came to the market first in that product line, and remained there until last year when Sailor discontinued the use of Jentle in its marketing. You can see that from the images on the communiqué mentioned here in another FPN thread.

 

So, some inks in the old Jentle line continue to be offered in 50ml retail bottles, which now have a square footprint instead of a round one, and I don't believe the prices of those inks have significantly increased with the change in marketing (i.e. dropping the Jentle name) and packaging.

 

The sixteen ink colours in the Shikisai range – which formed a subset/subdomain of the Jentle line – also have the Jentle name dropped from their marketing, and are now repackaged in retails bottles with a square footprint, but only in 20ml bottles. They are the only Jentle inks that have seen a large price increase as a result (or side effect) of the exercise.

 

You could 'argue' that the Shikisai range are the only Jentle inks of note and/or that matter, but since Sailor 'owned' the Jentle name, it means whatever Sailor includes in its scope in any rational discussion in an open forum, and not just the subset of interest to one or a few of the participants. No, the discussion participants are not 'self-selecting' to share/endorse an implied understanding that 'Jentle' means 'Shikisai', because I'm part of this discussion and I don't accept that non-authoritative scoping of what 'Jentle' covers.

 

Oh, and for what it's worth, Sailor has not discontinued production of any of the Shikisai ink colours, and anyone who really want them can still buy them (under the new Shikiori name), and I think that's the intentional play (or is that ploy?) that the company is making.

 

Edit: grammar

Edited November 18, 2018 by A Smug Dill

[Honeybadgers]

That's not semantics, that's clarification. Semantics is argument over the words over intent. You're just clearing up things about the line.

 

Now, as to whether or not you're arguing semantics of japanese words, that'd be you arguing with yourself

 

Sailor does at least have a history of all-but rebranding an ink they already made. Grenade and oku-yama are damn near indistinguishable.

 

Either way, the square bottles haven't yet made it to Amazon, which is the primary retailer I use.

Edited November 18, 2018 by Honeybadgers

[A Smug Dill]

Either way, the square bottles haven't yet made it to Amazon, which is the primary retailer I use.

Square 20ml bottles:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Sailor-Jentle-Yamadori-blue-green/dp/B075ZWC8DW/

https://www.amazon.com/Sailor-Ink-Bottle-Souten-20ml/dp/B075ZVQ3RX/

https://www.amazon.com/Sailor-Fountain-mini-Bottle-Color/dp/B06WP7MM92/

https://www.amazon.com/Sailor-Fountain-Pigment-Bottle-13-1006-230/dp/B06XCX23RH/

 

Square 50ml bottles:

 

(I haven't seen any.)

 

I'm not sure if there ever were Sailor ink listings that were "sold by Amazon".

Edited November 19, 2018 by A Smug Dill

[bass1193]

Welp apparently even the German market was trounced by the "let's sell 20ml for greater than our old 50ml price" thing Sailor has been on. Ugh. I got into Sailor because their inks were cheaper than many others.

 

Anyway, thank you Honeybadgers and SmugD for making me aware of a classic Visva review of my fave ink. Don't know how I missed this one! 😄

[A Smug Dill]

Well, Sailor Jentle inks weren't cheaper than 'standard' Diamine and Rohrer & Klingner inks, even at the old pricing, as far as I'm aware. By that, I meant how Sailor inks were priced in the Japanese market and/or made available for online ordering by Japanese sellers, versus how Diamine inks were/are priced by UK sellers and R&K inks by continental European sellers.

 

There are plenty of cheap inks on the market that you can buy/import, and which are quite highly regarded by ink reviewers and users in this forum.

 

Oh, and my 'spare' 50ml bottle of yamadori – the last one I could find available on Rakuten at the old pricing – has just arrived in the post. I 'snapped it up' before I opened my first bottle of it and decided I wasn't that impressed by it. Oh well.

Edited November 19, 2018 by A Smug Dill

[Ryanlim]

Thanks everyone for highlighting the change. I just ordered a few remaining jentle colours in the 50ml bottle from the Dutch retailer LCdC. looks like they are also transitioning to the 20ml bottles. Their prices are still reasonable, imho....