Muji Fountain Pen

If you haven’t heard of Muji, well, its just about my favourite store ever. Muji is a Japan based department style store that makes high quality products for a reasonable price. If you are a stationery lover, you absolutely must drop everything and visit your local Muji store (if you are lucky enough to have one). Their paper is amongst the best available for the price and works really well for fountain pens.

Sadly, I don’t have a local Muji store, so its become something of a holiday must for me to go and visit one whenever I am able to go overseas or even over east. I am not exaggerating when I say everything I have purchased from Muji has been high quality from food, household products, skincare and stationery.

Ode to Muji aside, I picked up their fountain pen in a visit to Muji in Hong Kong after having seen it online. I really liked the industrial style aesthetic it came with and I obviously love everything about Muji, plus it’s a beginner priced pen, so it was an easy purchasing decision for me.

The Muji fountain pen is made of aluminium with a knurled grip section. It’s a little on the thin side, so its comfortable enough for quick notes but not as much for long sessions. Its very light in weight and the knurled grip helps a little with the slipperiness of the pen.

The Muji fountain pen sports a Schmidt fine, steel nib which is a little scratchy compared with other starter fountain pens (like the Pilot Metropolitan) but for the price it feels no worse than a Sailor nib and nothing a bit of smoothing won’t sort out. It only comes in one width, which I believe is a Fine.

The pen doesn’t come with a converter or cartridges, but cartridges can be picked up at Muji at the same time and it takes standard international size. Its also big enough to take the standard international converter – I used one from my Faber Castell for this review and it worked fine. I like that it uses a standard sized converter so you’re not stuck with just using a specific brand of cartridges – especially since there is no Muji near me.

All in all, I think this is a reasonable contender for a good beginner fountain pen. I think it can be a bit difficult to source (I’ve heard that they are not often in stock at Muji?) compared to some other options like the Pilot Metropolitan or Kakuno, although it does have a bit more of a unique aesthetic and doesn’t look like its been designed for children (if you’re not into pens with smiley faces on the nibs). There are better nibs available but this is still a good choice if you can get your hands on one.