Longhand with Athena.



I wonder if they’re getting any more
walk-in business now that their name is a little less, well,
whimsical.

 

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To commemorate my birthday month, I wanted to
try blogging in longhand, possibly like a twelve-stepping Luddite. Sadly I have
no pocket scanner. There’s no out-of-pocket-scanner near me in the office. We do
have one in the creative area but it knows its place on earth better than
Foucault’s pendulum. (What about wireless? Well, if we can’t even get around to
wireless printing, wireless scanning seems as far away as Space:1999.)

The pen I used to write the above
(partial) entry came from a shop called Yawasama, in Robinsons Manila. The shop
is on the third floor, where the hardware store and the computer and gadget
shops are. It is a somber ninja hiding in plain sight in a crowd of computer
geeks and happy families in matching t-shirts buying folding chairs at 50% off.
Yawasama sells antique and vintage Japanese items, including inros, tsubas and two full suits of reproduction
samurai armor. (I think they’re reproduction. I could be wrong.) There are
leather pipe cases, brass and silver hair sticks, a yellow Bakelite hairclip
with embossed cherry blossoms, wall cabinets full of war artifacts.

Oh yes, and one pen.

 

 
Being more of a user than a collector, I
immediately inked the pen when I got home.

Athena the Pen was a Maruzen brand (in
Japan) in the 1930s.

 

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Maruzen released a limited edition Athena the
Pen in 2002, says this press release.