Here are some stationery items I found while visiting a few shops today. Exploring stationery stores is always so much fun!
The mechanical pencil refills and erasers on the right side of the photo were given to me for free, even though I tried to pay. The shop owner insisted on not accepting any money, saying, “I want people who love stationery to use them.”
It must be great to have such a fantastic variety. In most commercial stores here in the US, their concept of “stationery”—specifically pencils—is limited to PaperMate, low-end Zebra, and disposable BIC pencils. It’s terrible.
I think all of us dream of visiting such ‘forgotten’ shops in Japan… although we would not know where to even start 
I love everything, but those Xerox Non-Photo Blue wood-cased pencils… Superb!
Buying online is a lot of fun in terms of searching single items, but digging into the shelves, the drawers, the backend, the boxes even the owners had forgotten, and gorging on the old stock: nothing beats that feeling.
It’s all about making stationery cool with younger generations again!! It’s noticeable how in Japan there is such a large following of stationery-enthusiasts on youtube where they show off what’s in their pencil case for school and stuff, meanwhile for my country (germany) there is, no joke, nobody like this at all Maybe it becomes a trend in the next decades again and we see new pencil innovation from the West as a result and stationery stores come back
I hope
There was also a time in Germany when you could rummage around in old stationery shops and discover a lot (I was lucky enough to do so). Unfortunately, in my region at least, all the old stationery shops disappeared many years ago.
I rummaged through small piles of dusty pens and pencils and picked out a few items I thought could be cleaned up. Left behind were faded Cross and Sheaffer pens, sticky rubberised Pilots, discolored Zebra Arbez… and a small mound of Zebra ‘Zig’ steel pens that couldn’t click anymore.
I found a couple of F-502 that still worked, opened one up to see a 1990 date stamp on the Zebra F refill. The owner perked up. “1990? That’s 35 years ago! When I opened for business!”
He kept asking if I was sure I could find working refills… and I assured him I knew how to go about it.
I hope he’s happy in retirement.
It’s a shame about all the brick-and-mortar small stationery stores closing everywhere. I don’t think we had many to begin with here in the West Coast USA, but what few stores do remain carry a noticeably diminished selection of mechanical pencils. 
