Japanese stationery

About 15 minutes away from Hiroo station, lies LOFT in the bustling land of Shibuya. It is a melting pot of everything you would need, from birthday cards to watches to shower heads, including stationery. Many would call it the epitome of a stationery wonderland; filled with everything that you would need to supply Tokyo with a variety of creatively designed stationery that would motivate any student to hit their books.

We had spent 140 yen to ride the crowded train, arriving at this pot of gold in search for an innovative product that we saw on YouTube. The video (clickbait), made just to show the world what Hajime-shacho, the famous Japanese YouTuber, had been using for stationery, was surprisingly helpful for us high school students. Out of the numerous stationery he pulled out of his bag, the beetle tip highlighter immediately piqued our interests. These highlighters are dual tipped, so you could use two colors at once. We immediately realized the potential that lay in this compact dual tipped highlighter—our pencil cases would be lighter than ever before. The functionality of the highlighter; the ballpoint pen-like body, where the highlighter popped out when it was clicked, gave us the reassurance that we would never have to worry about losing a highlighter cap again.

We navigated ourselves around Loft (as it was carefully organized, we were able to find the pen section with ease), and found the beetle tip highlighters. We put one to the test. Unfortunately, it failed to meet our expectations: the colors were a little too dark and bright for our liking, as we preferred something that wouldn’t overwhelm the text underneath, and with a slight angle difference, you would find streaks of the other color floating above your perfect highlight.

What caught our eye, swimming in the same tester pot, were the undefeatable Mildliners. Although each color came in its own aesthetic packaging, and they had caps instead of a pushable click, each of the colors was a perfect stand-out hue that made the writing underneath readable. The highlighters themselves were very light and, even better, also had a marker tip.

If you’re looking for something to add to your stationery collection, we definitely recommend exploring Loft.