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My cafe at the Boulevard St.Michel is now relocated into a shopping mall in Japan

Once upon a time, I was young and was studying for my thesis in Paris (at the end of the 1980s).

Every Saturday morning, I went by Metro to a cafe at the Boulevard St.Michel. I don't remember the name but it looks like it is called "Le Lutece" now.
I bought a German newspaper, had my coffee and wrote some to do memos for the next week.

Now, 35 years later, Paris is too far away and such kind of cafes do not exist in Narita (Japan). So, I am going by bicycle to a shopping mall.

I am also buying groceries here and there. I am using a back-pack and shopping consists of regular removing all the contents of my back-pack and repacking them. I am always afraid that I would loose my pens when doing this, so I have a special pen set for this "coffee-drinking-shopping". This is it.

A leather daily diary and a leather pen box and some famous pens.



I gotcha. Everything in this picture is not what it looks like. While the pen box is described as "leather" on Aliexpress, I found a a note in it "LDPE RECYCLABLE". First time that I hear that leather is made from LDPE (=  low-density polyethylene). I would like to see the animals which have such hides.
As the box smells leather, I assume they used leather-imitation spray too.
At the end, it doesn't matter, the pen box is very well made and protects the pens when they are in the back-pack. The insert is conveniently removable. Pens the size of a Montblanc 149 can be added easily. If you add 6 Montblanc, it might be a bit crowded.

There is a possibility that it is actually leather-coated LDPE, but it is nowhere said. 



And the pens: I really would prefer to take my Waldmann pens with me, but I am too afraid I might loose one or all. So, I also take a set of cheaper pens, "homage pens" with me, in the picture you can see Majohn A1 pens (Nr. 1-5) and a Hongdian 1866 (Nr. 6); all nibs are steel EF. EF is what I need for writing, everything larger is unsuitable.

The notebook cover is also fake leather, a different type compared to the box leather. In this case, they clearly stated that it is faux leather.
However, the paper in the notebook is not bad, 100g/m2. I tested with a variety of nib/ink combinations, no leak-through and just a little bit show-through.




















 

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