Ink Review: Pilot Iroshizuku ina-ho (Rice Ear)

[Chrissy]

From Japanese ina-ho translates to Rice Ear and is a light to medium brownish yellow colour similar to the colour of wheat. It tends to lean slightly blue/grey and has a water resistant blue dye content when chroma tested. It’s an unusual shade of ink and I found it difficult to find comparison inks to match it against from my collection.

Ina-ho is a well-behaved ink that didn’t suffer from any skips or hard starts when I put the uncapped pen down to do swab tests, dry times and water resistance. It flowed well and felt quite wet and smooth writing.

In my experience it showed up much better when writing on white papers than it did when writing on cream papers. I also didn't experience any feathering on the papers that I wrote on.

Available in attractive Pilot Iroshizuku 50ml glass bottles and 15ml sample bottles from many retailers worldwide.

• Nib Dry-out: Not noticed.
• Start-up: Immediate.
• Nib Creep / “Crud”: Not seen, even after a week in the pen.
• Staining (pen): Not seen after several days - easy clean-up.
• Staining (hands): Washed off of my hands easily.
• Clogging: Not seen.
• Water resistance: Not sold as waterproof, but the blue grey content is water resistant.

PI Ina ho.jpg