I know these EDC posts are popular on the internet, but I usually don’t give in to them. Still — with nothing else on my mind today, we might as well take a look!

Here, have a look!

What do we have here… let’s see.

Pen Case

The pen case is a three pen case I got for a few hundred yen from Aliexpress. At that price I kind of doubt if it is good or quality leather, but it looks fairly nice anyway and has held up for the couple of years that I’ve had it. The inside slides out, doubling as a desk holder while I’m working.

The pens inside I rotate. Today it is these three:

• The blue one is a Diplomat Viper. A beautiful German made pen that writes incredibly smoothly, despite not having a gold nib. It’s filled with Pilot Blue-Black ink, a nice conservative business friendly ink.
• The matte blue one is a Pilot Vanishing Point, Pilot’s unique design to allow a capless and retractable fountain pen. It has a gold nib, but writes less smoothly than the above, probably because it is extra fine (about .38 mm). I have it filled with a bolder dark blue that leans purple. A less business-friendly color, but oh well.
• The cracked ice green one is a FPR Jaipur, a US designed but Indian made pen. It has a flex nib, which means the line width can vary from .38 mm to 2 mm depending on how hard I press down. I have it filled with a dark red, perfect for marking on student papers.

Notebook

The notebook cover is a B5 sized leather portfolio style cover that I got from Aliexpress for around ¥2000 yen. Not cheap, but not really expensive for leather. It claims to be real crazy horse leather (a high-quality, full-grain leather) and seems like it from what I can tell.

Inside I keep…

• A Mead Notebook. For non-US people, this is pretty close to the same size as B5, making it a good fit for this notebook. One of my trips to the US was around back-to-school time, so I bought up about 20 of these things at 50 cents apiece. I’m still working my way through that stash. Incredibly cheap low quality paper that will bleed through to the other side with even gel pens, but hey… only 50 cents. I use the notebook for daily notes, so it’s fine for my purpose.
• A Campus notebook with ~10 sheets of paper inside. This stuff is not as cheap as the above, but is fairly good quality, so I use it for classes or meetings where I might have to give the paper to others.

You people outside Japan might not be familar with the Campus paper.

It’s a fairly good quality paper for fairly cheap. I like these binders. With so many holes, you don’t have that problem of US 3-ring binders with the paper ripping out and the need to reinforce the holes.

Misc

• AirPods Pro
• iPhone + magnetic wallet connection

[No photos here, but use your imagination]

I’ve probably carried one form of headphones or another since my Walkman days. The big problem with wired headphones, at least for me, has always been that if you coil them for easy carrying in a backpack, after a year or two wires inside break and one or both of the speakers stops working. Also, the wires tend to get caught on things as you move about. The AirPods eliminate these problems. The noise cancellation is pretty spiffy too!

The iPhone may be obvious. I forget what brand makes the wallet connection. I even forget where I bought it. It might have been a cheap Chinese copy on Aliexpress. Whatever the case may be, the magnet in it is strong enough that it sticks to my phone like glue. So tightly that my kids struggle to pull it off. It has room for 2–3 cards, an ID, a little cash: all plenty for me.

And… that’s it. No, no pocketknife. I know that is a staple of EDC posts. The laws for knives are very very strict in Japan. Anything longer than 6 cm (2.3 inches) is illegal and can result in arrest or imprisonment. Yeah — they are serious. Even small knives might result in questions. The law is vague and actually has a clause stating that anything that could be used for bodily harm is illegal. If police don’t like the look of you and they can almost certainly find a reason to stop and question you. And in Japan, those questions can be multi-hour in a police station. So it’s all around safer to just leave it at home.

How about you guys? What is in your EDC?

David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Mastodon. 【Support @dbooster with Hive SBI】