Back in February I ordered Sweet Pink Love ink and a non-Pelikan fountain pen from the Bungubox site.
The pen, an Onishi Seisakusho collaboration, called (I think) “Sakura Fubuki” or “Raden Sakura” captivated me with its pink and white colors and little raden cap finial in the shape of a cherry blossom (sakura). Bungubox is sold out, but you can order the pen with a non-raden cap from Jet Pens.
Ordering it was unexpectedly exciting because midway through ordering I somehow got away from the small, English part of the website and onto the main part, which is, of course, in Japanese. I kept ordering, adding (I hoped) a bottle of the Bungubox ink “Sweet Love Pink,” the brightest shade of bright pink I’ve ever seen. I say “I hoped” because everything, including the invoice and payment method, was displayed in Japanese characters. Fortunately, the shopping cart and PayPal symbols were familiar. The total, including shipping, was roughly $200.
This all happened at a sleepless 3 AM. When my alarm went off at 6:30 and I checked my email, there was the confirmation. Running it through a translator I read the pen would arrive in early April.
Bungubox shipped the package DHL and it arrived on schedule. The box was well-packed and a pleasure to open, complete with a lovely little note.
Ink Review:
Sweet Pink Love ink is a delight. Dye-based, made for Bungubox by Sailor, the ink comes in a large, square 50 ml bottle. It’s at once bright and color-dense, wet, doesn’t feather or bleed on any of the papers I’ve tried, and rinses easily. The pink is so bright and fuchsia there’s an almost bright blue undertone to it. I didn’t time it, but it dries fast enough that I haven’t had any page-turn smearing, even on Tomoe River paper.
Above is the ink on the Bullet Journal 2 notebook by Leuchtturm. If this is a good example of what Bungubox ink is like, I’m hooked.
Pen Review
This pen is pretty. From what I’ve read, the maker is a small Japanese company. The pen is slim, comes with a fine nib (gold-filled steel) and cartridge converter, both from Schmitt.
My nib is perfect. It’s firm with an incredibly smooth fine-ish line. The feed is wet enough to write with the Sweet Pink Love comfortably on every kind of paper I’ve tried.
The body of the pen is pink and white cellulose acetate. Unlike the Jet Pens’ version, the Bungubox pen has a pull / click cap rather than a screw cap — which means I’m constantly unscrewing the pen’s body. The cap has a flat finial with an adorable little raden sakura flower on its end.
Admittedly, I bought this pen because it was such a pretty celebration of springtime. Inked with the Sweet Love pink, it’s become my current favorite pen.
