As a man whose handwriting could be defined as infantile at best, I can’t help but admire those who can wield a fountain pen like a paintbrush. Thanks to the bizarre way in which I hold my pen (I’m right-handed but people often ask if I’m a lefty purely because my grip is so odd), writing with any pen whose ink is wetter than a cheap ballpoint’s results in my hand turning blue and an enormous horizontal smear of ink across the page as if the letters were warping through time.

After seeing this short video from Japanese pen makers Namiki, though, I’m genuinely tempted to sit down and practice writing my ABCs all over again if it means that I can correct my awkward grip and learn to write as beautifully as this…

There’s no commentary or music, but this video, which shows the variety of writing styles that the Namiki Falcon pen is capable of producing, is utterly spellbinding and we found ourselves watching in complete silence until the very end.

When I first arrived in Japan, I was half under the impression that I’d soon be learning shodō, Japanese calligraphy, and that every other Japanese person could produce beautiful, hand-written kanji characters with relative ease. There are plenty of shodō classes around for people to enrol in, but up until now I’ve only met one or two people under the age of 70 who are proficient in the art, which put paid to my daydream of me slowly wooing a beautiful 20-something Japanese woman while she taught me to write exquisite kanji…

There are, however, plenty of Japanese who enjoy western-style calligraphy and whose writing puts mine to shame. It’s wholly humbling to see someone whose first language is not English effortlessly penning line after line of beautiful English characters as if they’d been doing it since they were a child.

For those interested in picking up one of these beautiful Japanese-made pens, Namiki also operates out of the US and has dealers that can be found in just about any state. For more information, check out Namiki’s official website here.

Source: Yahoo! Japan News