Scribe

I'm sorry.

Hey, what's up? We miss you, Tim.

Oh yeah, like it's fun to try to schedule things between 3 people in completely 3 different places.

Yeah, sure enough, it couldn't be.

Gosh, I, I was like thinking about this, trying to figure out what my What I've been reading and doing, like I've just been sleeping, but I've been watching, watching Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which is their new, new series on whatever. I think it's still Paramount Plus. I don't know who owns who or what, but I think to me, the best part of it is that Holly Hunter is like the, the captain, the main person. And Holly Hunter is just a delight in everything she does.

So she's really great. And then also the kind of like recurring villain of that is played by Paul Giamatti. And again, amazing. And the thing I love about Paul Giamatti is whoever he plays, he just puts his whole self into it. So he's like this over-the-top kind of space pirate character. And man, he's just, he leans into it. It's so campy. And so just like over the top, but he is, he is there for it. He's just, yeah, he's, he's great.

Yeah, no, it's, it's very good. This, this show. It's so, so, you know, you know that saying there's, there's two wolves in us all and there's the inner conflict. These are my two wolves. It's Star Trek is either like these, this new series and like a lot of the new ones have been very, they use a lot of very like modern kind of like ways of talking. They use like idioms and things that just like college kids and Zoomers would use now. And like things like that, where this is set like 900 years in the future, which is not probably very accurate. So there's, there's part of me that says, oh, that's not the way that Star Trek does it. But the other part of me is, well, it's fun. And like, you It's Star Trek for the modern age. And at least we still have Star Trek and it isn't just like a big kind of, you know, empty spot like it used to be. So that's, that's how I, yeah, I'm kind of like somewhere in between. So it's, it's funny. Like this new series is set, Star Trek Discovery, like jump forwards several hundred years. And now this is like a thousand some years in the future. And there's still like San Francisco is happening, is still there. I'm just like, I don't know if San Francisco is going to be here, going to be here by 2028. So I hope so.

Yeah. Just float out. We're actually part of Asia now. No, the, so it's yeah, like San Francisco, there, the Golden Gate Bridge is like still there in this, this future, 1,000 years from now, the Ferry Building, which is like at the end of Market Street, there's this old historic building that's like farmers markets and like upscale groceries now. And apparently that's still there in 1,200 years. And I'm just, I'm just very surprised by that.

Apparently. Apparently. So yeah, that's, that's a good series. I watched a lot of it on the plane going there and coming back. So I have a few episodes to catch up on, but really enjoying that.

Going to Hong Kong from here, it was 15 hours. And that is not a, that is not an easy flight. And then coming back, we, we flew from Hong Kong to Japan to Osaka and that flight back was like, It was only like 11 hours. So still, still a lot. It's cool. You fly over, in part you fly over like the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Those like islands that dot down. So you can kind of like, if it's not too cloudy, you can just, just see this little line of Alaska. It's pretty cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's good. Yay. That's very nice.

Yeah. Also reading this Neal Stephenson book called The Diamond Age, which is, I think he wrote it like 20 years ago. It's, it's about this new future world that's kind of like, there's the Neo-Victorians, like people who, it's very colonialist and people who are just like re-embodying like the Victorian ideals and it's It's funny. And also, as with other Neal Stephenson novels, it's 3 novels in 1. It's just, it's this thick. That's, yeah, it's, I'm reading on the Kindle, so it's not actually that thick, but you know, I've seen this before in a store and man, it is, that book is thick.

Yeah. Yeah. No.

Have you ever read any Neal Stephenson books like Snow Crash or any? Yeah. He's, he's very, it's very, it's like a, a Russian novel meets like a sci-fi novel. Like it's very, very thick. Yeah, it's very dense.

Not quite like Dune. I guess Dune is like a Russian novel, sci-fi novel, but yeah, this is, it's a lot. That's it for me. What is, oh, and what am I writing with? Actually, so I'm at work and I stupidly left my Hobonichi and my pencil out on my desk, out outside of this conference room. But I've been writing with, lately I've been using the, oh gosh, what was it? It was the Yellow Eras, the, the Van Dyck. Remake, the Blackwing Eras. That's really nice. Yeah, I also have a really nice Apsara Indian pencil that a coworker brought me back from their trip to Bangalore. I'm sitting on this. So that's a nice one too. And then I'm writing in that little Hobonichi Weeks planner that I got. That's really great.

What does the COVID look like? It has like little Tamagotchis, like on the COVID They did a— I don't know if you remember Tamagotchi or not from the '90s, but Yeah, they came back.

Yeah. I had no idea each of the little Tamagotchi stuff has like a name. Like, of course, of course they do, but just little, little names. And there's a special Hobonichi Tamagotchi that they made just for that collab. So that's on the COVID That's awesome. That is, yeah. What I've been, what I've been using, although I have found it's really, it's, it's hard to use because my handwriting is not small enough. Like those Japanese grids are just like so tiny. It's 5 millimeters. And man, I like, I take up like at least 2, 2 lines of that. So I have a couple coworkers who also use Hobonichis and they're like, I have these tiny little neat handwriting. And I'm just like, I don't know how you do it. The Brad Dowdys of the world.

Yes. Did I tell you that these are bifocals? Like these are progressive lenses.

I hate them. Like I'm starting to get used to them, but like this is, I can't really see when I do this. Look out the bottom of them. Cause that's where like the reading glasses are. And the only time it really gets in the way is when I'm like sitting on the couch and I'm kind of like laying back, trying to watch TV on the, on the couch back. I have to put my glasses down here. I was like, oh God, I'm turning into my father.

Your eyes will get used to it. Sure. But at what cost?

What about your tools of the trade, Johnny?

How, how is it on Switch?

Switch 2.

I have a friend who has a PlayStation, whatever the newest one is, 5, and I played it on that and it was just like, looked amazing. And I know that has considerably better processing power than, than the Switches. And so I'm, I heard that they like downsampled it or something a little bit. And it sounds like they still did.

Yeah, okay.

gobbled it down.

Yeah. Has anybody in your family picked up the new Pokémon Animal Crossing game?

Yeah, it's, uh, so they made a Pokémon game that's basically kind of— it's one of those cozy games like Animal Crossing is. So you can— apparently you're a little Pokemon who can add Pokemon to your islands and adopt some of their powers. And I don't know that much about Pokemon, but like people have been saying it's just been really amazing.

Oh yeah. Islands of Adventure.

Yeah.

I think so. Yeah.

Yeah. My island is 6 years old at this point and I'm just like, I'm afraid to, it's like I have too much of, I can't, can't let it fall.

Where's my coffee shop?

Just a bunch of electrons.

He said crisp.

I still have 2 of my original villagers, so I haven't let left in— let leave in 6 years. Just, no, you're staying here with me.

You know what we should do? We should— we should host an episode on Animal Crossing and let— let people come and hang out and watch it, because now with the Switch's, like, audio recording and, like, chatting capabilities.

Yeah, I don't know if we'll find more than 12 people that want to— yeah, we barely have 12 listeners.

But what is French for pickle?

Okay.

Is it like Cornishon?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Interesting.

Cute.

Oh, it's just all daily?

Yeah, what design do you have in yours?

Yes.

You can also— you can also get one of their fancy covers and just, just really just throw to people and it's fine.

Oh, I didn't know you can't put the regular cover on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh wow.

Just writer. Writer Carol's like, I just need more.

Yeah.

oh man, I picked up the nicest We can talk about this a little later, but I picked up the nicest yellow-green at a stationery store in Japan. It's, it's an Iroshizuku ink, like one of those really beautiful Sailor inks. It's called Chiku Rin. Yeah, I wish I brought it with me to show you, but it's, yeah, it's really, it's so nice. I haven't inked it up yet, but I will be.

Oh yeah, it's really pretty.

Oh yeah, raspberry cheesecake.

Do you have— okay, this is the most basic bitch thing— do you have a Cheesecake Factory in In Baltimore?

I don't— not my favorite place, but I, I have a weakness. It's a, it's about a bajillion calories, but they have a key lime cheesecake that is one of my favorites. Yeah. I've— it's so good. It's just very, it's very limey and citrusy and yeah.

Yeah, because they give you just gigantic portions.

Yeah, here's a— here's the 40-page menu and so much.

You also have— you also have in here two words: wheat paste.

I was gonna ask if you were making it yourself or buying a pot of it.

It's, is it just flour and a lot of water? Is that, or just a little bit of water?

We'll see.

Yeah. So this, this is whatever the opposite of slowing down in analog is. I, I made an app, so, uh, like an iPhone app.

As one does. Well, it's, it's, I, I shouldn't say I made it. I, uh, Claude Code made it. Like, uh, it's an, it's a vibe-coded app. You've heard the term vibe coding before. Yeah. So basically I used AI to help me code it and make it, but it scratches a very specific itch that I've had.

One of the ways that I used ChatGPT a lot was when I posted a picture to social media or on the website, I always try to put an alt description on it, which is— alt description is what like people who are blind or have low vision, if they use a screen reader, it's the sort of like text that it reads to tell that, that person using the screen reader, like what the image is. So if I upload a picture of my cat, I would have an alt description that's like a small black and white cat looks, you know, just describe the scene. And used to do it by hand. And then when ChatGPT came along, I was like, you know, this is a really good application for AI, right? They have it just kind of do, describe these things automatically. It can work faster and more accurately than I can usually. So I used to have just a custom little shortcut in my ChatGPT app that I would just upload a picture and it would just spit out, spit out a description. And because of recent things, I decided I wanted to divest in OpenAI and take that app off my phone. It's there, been working with the Pentagon on a lot of really shady stuff. So I was like, you know, I missed that feature though. So I was like, I just want to do a, I just want a really fast, easy app that does this. And I look for it and I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. So I was like, okay, I'm going to make one. So it's also like at work we use Cloud Code. So I was like, I'm going to just learn how to use this a little bit better, but it's a very simple app. If you guys are on our Patreon, you can see the video for this, but essentially I have just a little app here. Oh, it's called Gestalt. It's Gestalt. So that's my— so you tap that and it brings up a little screen to upload some, some picture, and then you hit the button and you choose your picture, and then it thinks for a second, and then it spits out a description, and then you can just hit copy to your clipboard, and then you can paste it into your apps. So it's— I learned a lot.

A lot about making this. If anybody's interested in trying out the beta and you have an iPhone or an iPad, I have not yet figured out how to like make Android versions, but you know, if this is interesting, if people like this, maybe I'll figure that out. Go to gestaltapp.fun and you can sign up for the beta. That's awesome. And yeah, so I'll eventually— Apple will like— well, maybe I, I'm sure the code is garbage because it was written by AI, but maybe eventually Apple will let it into the App Store. Kind of properly.

Just an app. Just a really simple, like really dumb app today.

Yeah, it was, I mean, it does exist, but not in the exact way that I wanted it. And I will say this is inspired by Toffer, our friend Toffer. They have been, they have made some really incredible kind of vibe-coded apps. There's one that's, let me see if I can find it in here. There's a crap, there's like a gratitude journal. There's this thing called a mantra mirror where basically it holds up a, it just turns on the camera and you, you say whatever your mantra is. I am good enough. I'm smart enough. Doggone it, people like you. And it uses voice recognition. It makes you say it 3 times and before you move on and it can see what you're saying. And then they also made like a morning pages app, which is really good. So basically you set it for 15 minutes each morning and like a goal of however many words, and it lets you delete, but it flashes red at you. So it does, it just doesn't want you to delete. So yeah, it's really fun. I, awesome. Yeah. I don't exactly know when Toffers apps are hitting the App Store, but they have, they registered like a business and everything for it. So yeah. So good for them.

That's really cool.

Yeah. If you have a, one of your kids has an iPad, right? No. Okay. I thought you had an Apple device somewhere.

Apparently.

Just, yeah, just 'cause—

Yeah.

It's so, yeah, they really inspired me just how, just, it's an interesting process. Like it's, it's not easy. I mean, it's not as hard as if you, I had to learn how to code myself and do it, but it's, it's, it's an interesting process to describe what you want and then kind of interpret like what the AI produces and, you know, get it all working. So. It was really fun. That's awesome.

The only other thing I was gonna mention is speaking of Field Notes and speaking of our friends at Pencil and Paper in Chicago, who we had on the show several episodes ago, they have custom Field Notes now for their shop. It's a 2-pack. It looks so cool. I linked to their Instagram in the show notes, but they're inspired by eki, like the Japanese stamps that I, I'll talk about in a little bit, but like the top part of the page, from what I can tell on their on their Instagram, it's like a big blank spot to put your stamp. And then underneath it is like a few lines of ruled paper. So you can like write about what it is. So I don't quite know how to get some of these because I don't live in Chicago. And I think it's like something you have to show up at their shop for. So maybe we can pull some connections and just ask very nicely. So yeah, Chicago friends, Eliza Bangert, if you're listening.

Get us some—

Yeah. Get us some Field Notes. But yeah, those are, those are really cool. So yeah, I just wanted to, to call that out.

Yeah. They look so good. It reminds me, it kind of looks like, maybe not exactly like the Fabio Ricci covers. If you remember, CW Pencils had those really beautiful, like Italian notebooks. I don't know, that's not Fabio Ricci. That's—

Emilio Braga, that's it. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it doesn't exactly look like that, but the kind of like trippy high contrast colors there.

Yeah, those are nice. They look cool. Yeah, so that is my—

Pretty good for pencils. I mean, I guess that's why, you know, Caroline worked with them is like, it, yeah, it works really nicely with the pencils.

So that is my Fresh Points. How about you, Johnny?

Okay.

I forgot it's Pencil Day coming up, and it's Pencil Day slash The Erasable 12th anniversary coming up. Oh my God, I think, I think that's next week. 12 years.

Yeah, no worries.

Yeah. Well, the trip was not anything to do with work. That was just a vacation.

So yeah, no, that was even better. Yeah, I do. So I still do the thing that I've done since we started, which is I am a content designer, which basically means I work on like a software design team. And rather than focusing on, you know, like the boxes and the buttons and the layout and the flows and things like that, I focus on the language, like on the words. So I'm a writer. But I write like error messages and button copy and microcopy. And I think a lot about the terms that we use. So if you use Adobe Photoshop, let's say, there's all those, like each tool has a name and some of those names are metaphors, like the lasso tool or whatever. And somebody like a content designer is usually thinking about what to call them. Cuz naming things is hard and it's harder than you would think. Yeah, I, it is always the sort of the thing that, you know, trips you up. But so I do that and. Right now for the last year, I've worked at this company called Glean, G-L-E-A-N, which is like a little, I mean, we're not that little anymore, but it's a, we're a company that we make AI-powered productivity tools for work. So just a really good like search tool. So if you work at a big corporation, you have just a lot of stuff like documents. And if you're a salesperson, you have Salesforce, which you have all these clients in there. And you know, if you're a programmer, you have Jira, which is like a support ticket system or GitHub, which has to do with your code. And you have Slack, which is like a chat app, or as you know, I mean, Microsoft Teams is another one, but yeah, you have all this stuff and this uses AI to sort of like help you find it like easily. So I remember the first time I used it, I worked at a different place. We were a customer and there was this one like Google slide deck that had this one piece of information in it that I remember seeing, but I don't remember who made it. I don't remember where it lived. I don't remember what it was called. And so I basically just typed into Glean. I was like that one slide deck from 6 months ago that had this one thing in it. And it was like, boom, this, it's this. And that was amazing. So I always kind of had them on my radar. So when I got laid off from Microsoft in 2024, which like was a good thing, cause I worked on Teams and did not enjoy that experience. And yeah, so, so I was like, oh, Gleam. So I work there. It's a, it's smaller than most companies I've worked at before. It's like 1,000 people. It's a late stage startup. And I am. Doing the work when I worked at Adobe a while ago as a manager, I managed a team. Then I went back to an IC role, which is like the, like a non-manager, like an individual contributor. And I have a person on my team now. So I'm a manager again, but only of one, which is nice. So that is, that is my work. It is. Yeah. I didn't travel for work, but I somehow like we have a big office in Bangalore and I would love to go to India and go to that office. I haven't figured out a reason to do that yet, but I'm gonna be buying so many Indian pencils if I make that happen.

Yeah.

I'll check it out. When he was in San Francisco, like several years ago, we, we talked about India is really cool. So yeah. Yeah, it was really fun.

I was thinking about that and I, I think to me, I think a, I think the thing that is really amazing, and I think one of the reasons for this is that things are just designed so intentionally, right? I think the, uh, there's, it seems like there's very little that is sort of like commodity, you know, like most pencils in the US are just commodity. There's, they just make 'em cuz they have to and they scrimp on costs and, and it's just kind of crappy. Like the experience isn't good. And I feel like, I feel like that, that is something like, at least in the two times I've been there, which hasn't been much, like it's just, there's a lot more value placed on sort of like the usability and like the experience of it. Like in, you know, if you go to a US-based hotel, you know, if you're lucky, if you have one of those like really crappy little Keurig machines in your, in your hotel room. And oftentimes you don't want to use them because when have they been cleaned? And in the hotels, the two hotels in Japan that I was staying in, have you ever seen those little like packet, like those little pour-over packets where it's, you open it and it's like a little, it looks like a tea bag, but it's coffee and you just kind of rip open the top and it has these little paper arms that you put over your cup and it's a pour-over.

Yeah. Yeah. They have those all over the place in Japan, and it's all— every single toilet that you use, like in a public restroom, everywhere, have— has the little washlet on it. So just blast, blast up there if you're using it, and it's fine because everything is so clean. I went to a restroom in a train station, and God, if you did that in like DC or New York or something, you would not want to use that restroom, but it's fine. Japan, there's like vending machines everywhere. There's so much stuff is just like really well-designed and functional. Like the transit system within, I don't speak a lick of Japanese or read it, but like I figured out the transit system in just a couple rides and it's just really, yeah, it just, just well-designed. And I think that goes for stationery too. I think definitely there's something that's like about the creativity and the written word part of it. But I think also, I think. They understand that like in this market, there's a higher demand for having a really good experience for stationery. And it's not a niche thing like it is here. It's just kind of mainstream. So I, I, I think that that's, that's a big part of it. Just like the value of the experience of the user, the customer is just really, really high.

And I remember talking to our friend Bruce who lives over there at some point. And Bruce was mentioning how there's also this big like belief in, you know, there's, there's the right tool for every job, right? Instead of a multitasker, you know, there's that you see a pencil that says for school writing or for comic drawing or something like that. Like there's, there's specific tools that are made for specific jobs and I feel like that's something you don't see that often here just because, you know what, it's faster and easier and cheaper to make, make one thing that works for everything. And generally that's like fine, but also like sometimes in order to, to work well for everything, it works well for nothing.

Yeah. And if you can just go to the 7-Eleven and buy like some of those those Tombows, right? Like they just have, I think those Mitsubishi, like those kind of light green pencils that we can get here. Like, yeah, you can buy them at a 2-pack at any convenience store there. Like, it's amazing. And there's also, gosh, I don't want to, there was a tweet years ago that was like, was like, if like, as a, as a white man, there's a very fine line that I have to tote in order to like, I just love Japan and being creepy about it. I really don't want to be creepy about it, but I do love going to Japan. It's just like such an interesting place, but there's like, the food is always like better quality and it's cheaper. It's way cheaper than San Francisco. Like I bought, there's this convenience store called Family Mart there and it's basically like a 7-Eleven and they have basically like a little thing of fried chicken that you can buy just like from a case there. And I, I don't think I would buy a piece of fried chicken from a 7-Eleven in the US. It's like those hot dogs that roll up and down. But the, the Family Mart chicken, the famichiki they call it, is so good. And it's got— it's 50 cents, right? Like, things are so, so inexpensive there.

Bruce, Bruce did this really cool thing a couple times at the San Francisco Pen Show. I don't know if he did it at other ones, but he partnered with a friend of his, Taizo Yamamoto, who is a papermaker in Japan. And they did this thing called paper tasting. And have you heard of this? No. So they had like, I wanna go, you sign up, I think you have to pay a little money and it's a workshop. And each person, they give them like 2 sheets of paper of, of like several different varieties. So let's say there's, there's, let's say they do 10 varieties. So you get 20 sheets of paper and they basically just kind of walk you through it. And each table, like you bring your fountain pen, you bring your ballpoint pen, you bring your pencil, like your marker. And they just talk you through it. And they're just like, hey, you'll notice this kind of paper is like, it has this kind of grain and, and notice how well it works for the fountain pen, but maybe not for the pencil. And here's the reason why. And they, they talk about the history of this paper and how it happens. They have like bank paper that is like a very specific variety of paper. And it's really, it's really educational and interesting because they talk a little bit about how it's made and how, where it came from. And just a, it's a way to be really, really kind of like intentional with your paper choices. And at least in San Francisco, that, that workshop sells out like quickly every year. I think that's the first to go. That's so cool. Yeah. So love, love that. I think, I think Taizo does most of the talking, but he mostly speaks just Japanese, and Bruce is bilingual, so he translates. But yeah, they're—

Oh yeah, come up to San Francisco to the pen show. We can do another episode live recording, and we can, we can have a party at Rickshaw Bags. I think that they would be into that. That would be cool.

The California one in LA.

Okay. Yeah, I just got my emails in. The Baltimore one's coming up, so Are you going this past weekend?

Oh, was it?

Yeah. Also somewhere in the mail is a little package for each of you too, with some stuff.

First place we visited. So went to Hong Kong first and I actually, I have no idea if I talked about it on the show. Did I mention to our listeners? So I'm engaged, my girlfriend of 3 years, 2 years, however long it's been, 3 years. And we, we went to Paris over the summer and got engaged, which is nice. But she, so she grew up in a Chinese-Canadian household and she grew up not being able to really speak to her grandparents who were from Hong Kong and only spoke Cantonese and did barely spoke English. And I think that she's always kind of like regretted not being able to like communicate or not making the effort to do that. So in the last few years, she's been learning Cantonese, which is an insanely hard language. Like it's all, It's a tonal language. And so there's, I can't, people will correct me here, but there's like, there's 6 or 7 different tones and some of them do not, do not sound right to me. So there's like, mei, mei, mei, mei. There's all these like tones and they mean drastically different things. Like there's, there's a word that like, if you, with one inflection, you're saying like, hello. And another inflection, you're saying the word, the The, the 4-letter C word that I'm not going to say. So be careful with your tone and like context, context clues, you know, you can get, but we went to Hong Kong to visit and she, so she could practice her Cantonese. She has like a conversation partner who lives there. She talks to on the, like on FaceTime every, every week. And she's just this really nice old retired lady who lives in Hong Kong who just showed us around and took us to good coffee shops and places to eat. But one of the places she took us to, and I can't remember the name of it, it's a. Like an old Chinese calligraphy stationery shop. And you can buy brushes like of any size and you can buy those like little ink, ink sticks. I don't know if you have ever seen those, but yeah, you like, you kind of grind them on like some water in one of those grindstones and then make, make the calligraphy ink. And they have, I, one of the things I included in your care package, Johnny, is a, a little pad of paper that, of this calligraphy washi paper. And I can't remember the Chinese name for it, but it's, it's really soft and it's, it's hard to crease. So I'm sure you'll, you'll enjoy that. We'll see how it is. And there's this really beautiful design on it. And I think everything in that shop is vintage. Like they're, it's really old stuff. And it was so cool to see, like I bought a fancy, I'm not going to use it, but I bought a really fancy ink stick. They had those, these little jade, like little things that you hold that has the little Chinese lion on the top. And what you would do is you would take that to a chop shop, which is they basically carve like your name in Chinese letters on it. And then you use that as like your legal signature. Like you would use that stamp. They do that in Japan too. And so instead of signing your name on legal documents, you might just use the stamp for yourself. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So yeah, just really interesting stuff like that. We found a couple other shops. This one is not stationery related, but you know, Hong Kong is very like, One of its things that it's pretty like iconically known for is like mahjong, mahjong tiles. And so we went to this really cool mahjong shop that has just new and old mahjong tiles. Like you can get, you can get ivory ones that were made a long time ago that, you know, they're not making anymore. There's plastic ones, there's wood ones. And yeah, they were just, it was really cool. I sort of know how to play mahjong. Like I know how to play like really the really dumb American rules. I don't know if you've ever watched, did you watch Crazy Rich Asians when that came out like years ago?

It was that movie. Just a fun movie with Michelle. That's fine. With Michelle Yeoh. And yeah, there's this like very tense scene where the like daughter-in-law and her kind of intimidating mother played by Michelle Yeoh are playing mahjong and it's like basically like old Chinese ladies and men like will play mahjong and smoke and laugh and drink and all this stuff. And they're just like intensely like staring at each other and having this showdown while playing mahjong. So it's really, yeah. It's, it's hard. It's like a very fancy, like Domino's. But yeah, so that was Hong Kong. We did a lot of other stuff there. Really good food. Hong Kong is a lot. It reminds me a lot more of New York City. Like it's a lot, it's pretty chaotic and a little dirty and yeah, it's, it's like that. It's also just, there's yeah, really good food and coffee. And we were there over Chinese New Year. So it was, it's like, it's like Christmas. Like it's, there's most shops have some kind of decoration and it's like everything's in red and gold and pink and yeah. And we, we were, we accidentally found ourselves the day before Chinese New Year. We found ourselves in the basement of a, of a mall there that has all of that like high-end food shops and stuff. And it was like wall-to-wall crowded. Like I couldn't move really in that shot. There were so many people. And later Erica's friend kind of explained to us, she was like, you know, it's like being accidentally caught in a toy store on Christmas Eve in the US. It's just like everybody, cause everybody's shopping to buy food for the family gatherings that they're going to have tomorrow. And yeah, it was just interesting to see. And then that next day everything was pretty dead. Like we saw some cultural things, but we, we basically got breakfast at this like Western diner where it was basically just us and all the other white people who weren't celebrating Chinese New Year. So yeah. So we did that. We, we spent maybe 4 or 5 days there. It's funny. It was, it was really hot and humid there and I was unprepared. So we went to a Uniqlo and I bought like basically really lightweight pants just to breathe. Cause it was, it was so hot and there was We went to Kyoto, we flew to Kyoto and it was really cold there. And I also was not prepared with that. So we also went to a Uniqlo there and I bought it like a puffer jacket so I could stay, stay warm. So Uniqlo has saved my life while I've been traveling so many times. So yeah, we flew to, so we flew in to Osaka. Osaka is like kind of the big town. That's maybe like 30, 40 miles kind of up, like down from Kyoto and Kyoto's smaller, but kind of more historic and famous and Osaka is kind of bigger.. And it reminds me a lot of like, you know how like DC and Maryland or DC and Baltimore, just kind of like one contiguous, like metro area. Oh yeah. But there's a lot of like stuff in between. So you just take the train up there and there's these two different spots, but there's, you know, it gets blurry in between. It's like San Jose and San Francisco too. But so went to Kyoto. So Kyoto was for a long time, the capital of Japan until whatever era it was where they moved it to Tokyo. So there's all this really ancient stuff there, like castles and And shrines, there's so many like Shinto shrines everywhere. We, we went to this like big temple. It was, most of it was recreated, but it was like, it had the same sort of grounds and some of the same buildings since the 1200s. Like it's, it's been around a long time. One of the cool— yeah.

You know, one of the cool— yeah, that's the thing about like Japan. And then when I was in like Europe, like in France and Spain, it's just incredible, like how old things are. Like, you know, in San Francisco, there's not much that's older than like 1906, because that was when the big earthquake was. A little bit older, like in New England and Baltimore, because like things have been there since the 1700s. But man, like that makes you just walk past like this, this really dirty old stone building in Barcelona and you look and it's, it was built in like the 1300s or something. It's just crazy. So, so we found this really cool stationery shop. I think I sent you a message about this. It's called Kyungyokudo. And. It's in, it's in Kyoto, but it's, it was continuously operating since the 1600s. And it started off as it's Japan's oldest like incense maker. So like ceremonial incense, but at some point, I don't know when in the past they started selling like stationery and gifts and stuff. So they have like really nice washi paper and like wrapping paper and origami paper. And they have like. Nice fountain pens and they have pencils. And I, I don't know, it has their name and their brand on it. I, I don't know who actually makes the pencils. I suspect it's Kitoboshi, but I, I can't tell for sure. Everything's in Japanese. So like I use my Google Translate app on the back and it said it was manufactured in Kyoto, which like is not where Kitoboshi is. Kitoboshi is in Tokyo. So I don't, I don't know. Maybe they make their own pencils and we just don't know, but it's, it's a very nice quality pencil. I bought— they had 3 hardnesses and I was like, what a coincidence. So I bought one of each packets and I split them. So each of us are getting 4 pencils of each hardness. So that's in there too. So it's really, it's a really nice pencil. It's high quality. It's very— it has an unfinished top. So it's not capped like so many pencils are. So yeah, that's a good one. Gosh, where else did I go? Yeah. There's a department store that I went to in Tokyo that I also went to here called Hans, H-A-N-D-S, which is just a catch-all department store, but they have a big, big stationery section. And I would say that I don't think there's anything like new and unusual that's not already on our radar from those kinds of places, but I just got a couple little fun— they had one of those like little erasers that when you wear it down on the sides, it basically forms like Mount Fuji, like the middle of the eraser has a little snow cap on it. So put some of those in there.

Oh yeah. Yes. We were, uh, gosh, we've— Erica found this coffee shop. It was really beautiful. It was called Walden Woods and you walk in and everything is white. Like it's this old kind of wooden structure that maybe was once maybe like a warehouse space or something. And they had— it was all kind of like whitewashed and there were— and then it was very marginally sort of like forest or camping themed. And their coffees were all sort of had this brand. There's one called the Walden Wolf and they have a couple others and yeah, just really, really beautiful. And they have, I was just like, is this, is this Walden? Is this what I'm thinking of? And so I, I looked in on the, on the like side of the wall, there was a quote from Thoreau and I'm going to, I'm going to try to look for it in my, in my pictures. But yeah, it was. So weird just to, just to see that. And one of the things they, I really wanted to buy some beans. I did not have enough room in my luggage, but they had packs of those, like those same pour-over coffees that I was telling you about that was kind of branded along with it. Yeah. So here's, here's the, gosh, so can't see this if you're not watching the video, but this is their espresso machine and you can see like they have like little, little animals down there. That's also white there. Was this really beautiful kind of like little merch area. And it just looks very, looks like firewood in there. The upstairs, like kind of like common area where you dine is, is just all white and has this tree in the middle of it. That's white. So, and then where was it? Okay. So there's a little shrine to Thoreau in there and it says Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. 'lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the colors of both,' which is a quote from Walden and other writings. So I, like, I, the manager of the coffee shop spoke English pretty well. And I was basically just telling him just, 'Oh yeah, my friend lives in like Maryland and goes to Walden Pond a lot.' And, and he was just like, 'Cool, thanks.

That was just a random, cool, weird experience. Just like a little, little Walden connection in Kyoto.

So the thing that like just really just captured my whimsy last time I went, and also this time, was like the stamps. Like, they're— I think I mentioned there's like ecchi stamps, which The thing that they're referencing with that paper, that pencil and paper stamp book, but like most train stations have a little collectible stamp. And if you, I actually bought a little special stamp book notebook to put a stamp in. So every time we, oh, that's the other thing, both in, in Hong Kong and in Japan, like we didn't take a cab once. We just did public transit everywhere or walked because it's just so amazing. Like you never have to wait more than 3 minutes for a train. Why can't we have nice things here? So we, so yeah, I got this little stamp book and most stations have a little rubber stamp and some museums have one. You know, it's really cool. So there's that. And then there's a— at a lot of the Shinto shrines, the bigger ones, they have something called— God, I think it's goishin. I need to look it up, but goishin, that's it. And they're, they're not stamps. They are, but it's like a little stamp and then some calligraphy that a Shinto priest will make. So you have your special little book. You should not— you put the Shinto stamps in your travel stamps book because that's kind of like You know, that's disrespectful because it's very like religious and has a lot of meaning and the other ones are like fun, cute things. So you have your special like Goshin book and you take that to the Shinto shrine and there's a little booth and you give them like ¥500, which is a dollar maybe. And they usually have this big stamp that they put in there and then they like do calligraphy around it that has maybe the date and the— it's commemorative, right? And has a little prayer on it.

The, the other, the thing that like each Shinto shrine, and there's like thousands in Japan, have like their own, have a different thing. So there's this one that like they have one that they use, but if it's raining, they have this special one, or there's one that they have, but for a limited time, like cherry blossom season, they have this other one. So I'm just like, I have this, like both that and those ecchi stamps, like triggers this, I don't know, lizard brain collector in my head. That's just like, I have to get them all. So I still am semi-serious. I really want to go to Tokyo or something and spend 2 days and just go to every single train stop that has the stamps. There's 87 of them and just get like each one of these stamps. I don't know if I'll ever do that, but there's part of me that just really wants to.

Yeah. So Erica, she humors me. She kind of like rolls her eyes and we, if we get off at a station, she's, she's very, she's like, yeah, let's go find the stamp. But. Just like, where is it?

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's, uh, some of the shops and cool things that we went to. A lot of just really amazing coffee. Yeah. Like that, that Walden Coffee is so good.

I should have.

I bought, brought a bunch of notebooks home. I don't think I bought any. I bought some really— that Azuko ink I did buy. Like a little 2-ounce vial of that just for fun. It was just a color I had never seen before. So I don't think I've ever seen that in my dough or anything here. So got that. Gosh, what else did I get? I got, oh, I was really into, do you know what gachapon is? It's these little Japanese vending machines that have these little capsules in it and they dispense, there's like little crap in there, like toys or collectibles or something, miniatures. And They have, you can get a miniature of anything. Like you can get little miniature Fuji cam, like Nikon cameras. You can get miniature, like classic Fisher-Price toys, like the little xylophone or like the little phone or whatever. Oh, neat. I got my mom one of those. There's also lots of like really weird random stuff. Like there, there was this gachapon machine that had little mini charms of Johnsonville brats, like Johnsonville branded sausage. And I'm just like, I've, I've been to a couple Japanese grocery stores. I've never seen Johnsonville stuff there. And it's, is this just like Some weird random American brand that like people are really into. Sure. So that was cool.

So I got a bunch of those. When we were in Osaka, there was this like in the middle of town, there's this tower that's kind of like old and famous and they had a little light-up version of that tower that I got. That was really fun. I didn't bring an extra suitcase, but I feel like everything I bought was really small. So that was, that was fine. Yeah. I also, my, my sisters and my mother are like big Disney people and I don't know if you know this about Disney, they have all these these lapel pins that you can collect and swap. Oh no. And they have this whole thing about it. And I did not go to Tokyo or to Hong Kong Disneyland, but I, at the airport, they had a little outpost and they had like special Hong Kong exclusive Disney things. And I picked up my sisters and my mom like special Hong Kong Disney pins. And my, all of my nieces are really into Sanrio characters, Hello Kitty and Cinnamoroll. And I went to a Sanrio store in Kyoto and bought them some like Japanese exclusive, like Hello Kitty things and yeah. So tried to, tried to bring home a lot of those things. Yeah. We also, one of the really cool things we did in Kyoto. So there's a shop where you can make your own rings and like jewelry rings and you can make it out of like stainless steel, not stainless steel, sorry, sterling silver or gold or whatever. And so we decided to make our own wedding rings. Awesome. They give you these basically little blanks that are like maybe 2 sizes smaller than your finger. And a hammer and a couple— have a few different hammers depending on what pattern you want on it and the hammer's texture. And you just sort of like hammer it down until it fits like the size that you need. And they, you like heat it up. So it like, it's, you can like, you know, make it a little bit pliable and you kind of hammer it out and then you can polish it up and then you give it to the person who's showing you how to do it. And they take it away and actually make it better, polish it up actual for you. And it's cool, like, we walked away with these rings that we're going to use for our wedding rings. Oh, that's so awesome. Really fun, like, story, like, oh, we made these.

Yeah, yeah, bring suitcase. Well, really, I do think that for me at least, like, most of the things that I was interested in buying were pretty small, so I did really need an extra suitcase. I just needed to make sure there was a little bit of room in my current suitcase. But I would say, yeah, have some amount of a plan, right? Have a few stores that you really are interested in. If you, if you listen, I'll have to, I'll find a link and put it in show notes. But like years ago, we talked to June Thomas, who was writing a story for Conde Nast Magazine about stationery shopping in Japan. And I feel like most of the places that she talked about there still exist, mostly in Tokyo. Like there's Kakimori, which you can make your own notebooks and they have these really beautiful, like steel nibs for fountain pens. Oh, like check that out. I'll put a link, but also ask your friends, ask me. There's, there's good recommendations for that, but also just kind of stay open, walk around, keep your eyes open, go off the kind of main roads into those little like alley roads. Like it's so dense there. There's so many cool stuff on side, like in side streets, both Hong Kong and Tokyo and Kyoto, they go, they're all dense enough where you can find that stuff. So just like one of the other things I was looking for too, were like, just like old cameras, like digital or film cameras. And I bought some film there in Japan, which is really cool. Like film I've never used, really cool stuff like that. So it's, if there's, there's a lot of hobbyists and people who go really deep in Japan. So there is a store for everything. If you have a really niche hobby, you'll probably find a store. Like I was, we were staying, our hotel was in this district in Tokyo, in Kyoto where they just, there's a lot of just beautiful knives, like kitchen knives and those really $700-$800 like Damascus steel, like kitchen knives. It's amazing. And if you're really into knives, you can really go deep on that. So yeah, keep the, keep an eye on that stuff.

Look for recommendations. There's a couple of really good, there's a, there's a YouTube channel called Tokyo Lens, which is a Canadian man who's lived in Tokyo for for years and years and he, he has a YouTube channel where he basically just sort of like has Westerner-friendly explorations and he goes to interesting like thrift stores and weird little places in Japan and he just kind of like walks you through. It's really cool. Yeah. Find yourself like some videos like that. That kind of helps. And also don't be afraid to get around on public transportation. A lot of people who don't live in places where there is good public transit are probably pretty intimidated by that. I would've been before I lived in San Francisco. Right. And it's, it's so good and it's inexpensive and it's just a really good sort of, yeah. Way to see, sometimes it's fa— it's like in New York, it's faster to get around on the subway than it is to take a cab sometimes. So, which is like bananas to think about. Cuz in most of the US that's not the case. So yeah, just keep your eyes open and, and stay open, but also, yeah, do a little research first and just see, oh yeah, I wanna hit up the store and hit up the store. Somewhere I have a list of some Japanese like stationery stores and things that I recommend. So I'll, I'll see if I can put that together and publish that somewhere on the website.

Yeah, no, that's fun. We did this. I feel like we did this last time too, and it was really, it was really fun.

Yeah, it was.

Yeah. Trying to think, I'm looking through my, oh yeah, one of the things I'm a little bit obsessed with is there's this, this like freight slash like logistics delivery company in Japan called Yamato Transport. And I am a little bit obsessed with their logo, which is this like mother cat carrying a kitten. And I, now I really want like a hat or a t-shirt or something in that logo, but I think it's probably one of those weird things where if a Japanese person sees me wearing it, it's if I was like in some other country and somebody was wearing like like a FedEx logo on their shirt or like the UPS logo or like the US Postal Service logo, which that would be a fun shirt thing to wear.

So much. Yeah. Yeah. So just cool little things like that. We, another fun thing, we, we ate at this very fancy Michelin star tempura restaurant. So it was, it was for my birthday dinner. Eric, happy late birthday. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, February 20th. Jesus. So yeah, we were, we were there and it, it's in the hotel and in this hotel that used to be the original Nintendo playing card factory. So pre-video games, right? They made Nintendo playing cards. And so now it's a, it's a, this high-end hotel and this restaurant, there's 6 people around the table and there's this chef in the middle who's like tempura-ing like fish and vegetables and Like when I tell you like the best carrot that I've ever eaten was like this tempura carrot that he made. It was amazing. So good. Just ate that and drank sake and yeah, it was, it was very good. So that's kind of like the highlight. Did a lot of other like really fun things in Hong Kong, although not a lot of like stationery-y things. Yeah. Like I, we. Went to some cool temples. There's this one called the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas, which there are a lot of Buddhas at that temple, kind of on the, on a mountain. And Erica tripped when she hit the bottom and kind of like twisted her ankle. That was fun. Oh yeah, it was. She's fine. Yeah. We went, oh, this is fun. We went to this. This is a very unique Hong Kong thing. They have this thing called villain slapping and it's just this one little spot and you go. And they, you pay them like, I think it's 50 Hong Kong dollars, which is maybe, I can't remember, like $7. And they give you these little, these little sheets of paper with little people on them. And you write down the name of somebody you don't like and you give it to the person at the little, at the booth. And I have a video that's playing here. So I, you have to sort of like light some incense and bow. And you put your incense in this little shrine and then they put the paper that you had down and they slap it with a shoe. I don't know if you can see this, but she's showing me and they're just like slapping the crap out of this paper. And that kind of represents like bringing bad fortune to this person who you don't like, whose name you wrote down. Just kind of like slap the hell out of it. And then they have you slap it too, because it's very satisfying. It's a really nice like slappy sound. And then they put it it in this cauldron that they light it on fire from the incense, then throw it in a cauldron. So I'm, I will not be telling you who, whose name I wrote down. I bet I can guess. Well, no, it's, it's, yes, it's my, my sister's ex who do not care for him.

Yeah, it's Tim. I put Tim's name down. No, that's where you really want it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it was, that was fun. So yeah, it's a good trip. Don't know what we're going to do next. I try to do like one international trip a year. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how it goes, but—

Bavaria. Have some Bavarian beer. Oh yeah. I would love, I would love to go to Italy to like Florence where they just, there's so much papermaking there. Just buy some just really amazing Florentine paper. Yeah.

I wanna go to the, the, the birthplace of paper that Roly Allan wrote about in, in the book, right? Like home of the, where the Zibaldoni was made and like the, all that fancy stuff would be fun.

Yeah, yeah, Fabio Ricci.

Talking to you, Steven Fransali.

Do you like our podcast? Most people like our podcast, but if you don't like our podcast, then we'll turn it off.