so to start this video out i'm gonna need to take a second because i can't believe this is
actually happening i didn't even think i was gonna be able to get a hold of these pencils let alone
make a video so right now i'm a little awestruck that they're here in the fresh
i can't even talk i'm in such disbelief the whole entire time that i've been doing youtube nothing
has been as difficult than getting these pencils originally i ordered these pencils may 25th
2021. i paid $166 from a seller who had very good ratings and a few days later they canceled it but
that's okay you know stuff happens i understand so i decided to order it again from another seller
who said they had it available i bought it the same day that my first order was canceled may 25th
again just like the first one the seller had very high ratings they said they had the item in stock
june 15th i got a tracking number which i was very excited about because i knew the
package was going to be coming in very soon right well fast forward to the estimated delivery day
it never showed up and just like the first person he refunds me at this point i'm a
little annoyed but that's okay you know there's plenty of fish in the sea there's plenty of other
sellers who are also selling these pencils so on january 28th i ordered from another seller
and lo and behold the next day the seller messaged me back and was like hey not only
do i have to special order them but they're also on back order for a whole entire month so
for the third time the seller once again canceled my order fast forward at this point it is now the
fourth of july at 10 26 pm i decided to order from one more seller and when i tell you that i
compulsively checked the tracking number to make sure it didn't disappear like the second time
i tracked that little guy all day every day and finally yesterday after 91 days of struggling
and waiting and getting sad and disappointed the post office finally dropped it off and now
it's here and throughout this video i'm going to explain what makes these pencils so so special why
they cost so much why they were on backorder who designed them everything i can about these pencils
because supposedly these are some of the best wooded pencils that you'll ever be able to find
and speaking of seeing how things will unfold today's video is proudly brought to you by
june's journey june's journey is a hidden object mystery game it's set in one of my personal
favorite fashion periods the 1920s you'll play as the main protagonist june as she looks for clues
to solve the mysterious death of her sister the game itself is lightly challenging it puts your
observation skills to the test when i play i still find it very relaxing and chill the
visuals of the game are nice it's a beautifully designed game and all of that is nicely wrapped
up into a murder mystery june's journey is free to download it's on ios android it's even on desktop
through amazon and facebook if that's more your vibe if you're interested in this game and it
sounds like something that's up your alley you can download june's journey for free through the
link down in the description box down below thank you june's journey for sponsoring me
even though i already played y'all are the real ones and with that being said let's unbox
now in order for you to fully understand what you're about to see we need to talk about shigeki
miyamoto because he is kind of a big deal he is japan's first furniture designer he's also
known for his methods of furniture restoration he teaches upcoming designers in japan and as far
as his craftsmanship goes it's absolutely known worldwide his designs his furniture they're not
looked at as furniture pieces they're looked at as sculpture as art as design as a piece he is so
legendary as far as like the chair designing world goes he literally has the title the god of chairs
he only uses a certain selection of wood from all over the world that he hand inspects
because not just any wood is good enough for his creations and over the years of him collecting
these very specific forms of wood he ended up with a scrap pile of just like really nice pure
wood that he wasn't too sure what to do with so he designed his own gallery shigeki wooden pencils
as expected if you're gonna buy a specialty pencil it's gonna come with the specialty price the exact
price of these pencils was 154 dollars and one cent just to give you an idea of how expensive
that really is you can go to walmart and get like a 10 pack of pencils for only one dollar
so the price of these pencils is absolutely astronomical but it's gonna make more sense
when you consider these more like an art piece rather than like a functional
tool so now that you know let's go ahead and finally after 91 days let's unbox this bad boy
so it also includes a pamphlet with all kinds of information on the pencils and most of it seems to
be in japanese but since i know a little bit about these pencils we'll go over the pamphlet in a bit
the first thing that i really like about these pencils is that even though they're very expensive
the packaging still seems to be very minimalistic and maybe even borderline environmentally friendly
it appears to be made out of recycled cardboard which i think is really cool because the pencils
are made out of recycled wood i really like how they put a lot of thought into the packaging
it's incredibly incredibly minimalistic just like the chairs that he builds all the colors on this
packaging all matches together i love this little owl i'm assuming that's like their mascot or logo
the sticker appears to be hand placed carefully because you know sometimes
when you get stuff and it has like stickers on it the stickers are just kind of slapped on
not this sticker this sticker is absolutely perfectly placed which is very nice
wow these pencils are absolutely incredible oh my god first thing that you're going to notice
about these pencils is that they fit 100% perfectly inside of the casing there's absolutely zero marks
from where they measured it this wood has been brushed out and polished to an absolute tee back
in my college years i had to take a woodworking class and that [ __ ] is not easy to do when it
comes to solid blocks of wood like this if you just even make like the slightest little dent
it'll mess up the whole entire thing so the fact that this wood is like perfectly smooth
and symmetrical and has literally no imperfections is incredible to see and by the way this holder
it's one singular piece so if you lift it up from the bottom you can definitely see how they had to
come inside with the tool and smooth it all out from the inside in here in fact this wood is so
incredibly shiny and polished so well that on the monitor it doesn't even look like wood it kind of
looks like a like a copper metal or something and something insanely cool about these pencils
is that each one of the pencils is one of the 10 wood types that he uses with his furniture they
include japanese cypress which is a very light beige japanese red birch walnut wood from north
america oak from japan rosewood from india which is an incredibly dark brown mahogany from brazil
african paduk this one is kind of like a brown blood red nara from the philippines it kind of
reminds me of like a natural version of general's charcoal like they got the same kind of vibe going
on we have teak from thailand and lastly we have japanese zelkova adding in the tree names and
where they're originally from i think that's a really nice personal touch and it kind of makes
me feel worldly the pencils do have additional wording on them and unfortunately i don't speak
japanese so i can't translate for you guys let me download google translate and we'll find out oh
okay according to google translate these numbers that are located on the barrel of the pencil
i almost had a heart attack for a second oh my gosh
because i looked at the pencil and i didn't see any lead in them and i almost passed out thinking
oh my god did i just buy a hunk of wood with no pencils according to google translate the
numbers that are located on the pencil that's how dense each individual wood is so for example oh
you can feel the difference so for example this japanese cypress it only has a density of 0.43
and the rosewood from india this one has a specific weight of 0.95
i'm trying to film as much as i can but i just can't stop rubbing this piece of wood
now as if all the fine details weren't amazing enough this little detail is just like that little
that little cherry on top and that's the little nook inside of this case at first
when i saw this i was like what is the point it's literally just like a hole inside the wood
what does it do but oh this is so good this little nook right here is extra
space to a lot your fingers instead of having to dig for them like this
that little divot makes it super easy because you press in there it kind of comes out and then boom
the thought that went into these pencils is just so incredibly satisfying my god
in the pamphlet it talks about shigeki miyamoto it also mentions his business partner who is actually
the one who picks out the wood and mentions when these pencils were created which was the 1990s
also the exact same time i was created on the inside of the pamphlet it talks about
the individual wood and their purposes on the back side of the pamphlet it mentions
the type of wood that the case itself is which by the way this type of wood
that microphone is going to be the death of me i'm telling you i like to lean this way and it's
right there the type of wood that the case is made out of is called birds eye maple from japan
now one of the coolest aspects about these pencils which i think is again just that as if there
already wasn't like a bunch of other cherries on top this one truly is gonna be another cherry on
top at this point we're at like five cherries each individual pencil is made out of its own
wood from a different continent and supposedly each one of these pencils has its own unique
scent because as you sharpen you're basically shaving off completely brand new untouched wood
usually with pencils it's made out of a bunch of plywood like this so it's been treated
been compressed but these pencils that's not the case this is one singular piece of wood
let me clear my nostrils first because uh i'm just one of those people who just can't smell anything
so first let's start off with rosewood from india i'm just like inhaling graphite right now
oh my god oh my god this smells just like a forest oh my god what that is so weird
oh my gosh i wonder if these little shards of wood i wonder if they have a scent to them too
not really the only reason i was using the sharpener is because i thought the little
pieces that came off sharpening i thought they would have like a more intense smell but since i
know that's not really a big factor i'm just going to go ahead and start sharpening the rest of them
this one smells dramatically different this one is african paduck from new guinea
this might sound really strange but it kind of has like a woody barbecue smell
why can i smell the earth on these pencils what is going on
by the way i really like the way this one looks it's very red japanese zelkova
this one doesn't really have much of a smell to it teakwood from thailand i bet this one's
gonna smell amazing if you've ever smelled any kind of men's cologne that has teak in it or
like any kind of candle yeah this smells exactly like that i'm having like a meta moment right now
where i'm like this is my job i'm just smelling pencils on the internet north american walnut
yeah this one smells like a principal's office this one is japanese red birch from
japan let's see what this one smells like this one smells just like freshly cut grass
this is such a trippy experience right now nora from philippines um this one smells
kind of like a swampy wood but you know what i mean like wood that has like a slightly musty
smell to it japanese cypress we'll see what this one smells like
oh my god this one smells so good okay so i mentioned earlier that rosewood from india it
smells like a pine cone this japanese cypress is the most fragrant one of all it smells just
like a full-on forest smell this pencil oh smell this pencil oh
yeah that smells nice it smells like a forest top yes wow we have oak tree from japan
it has a very weak uh scent of just like basic wood
and lastly let's see what mahogany from brazil smells like
i should not be smelling this much graphite but yeah i really can't smell anything from this
usually when it comes to pencils when it comes to graphite there's usually not that much of a
difference between like the highest grade quality and like something from walmart like this all of
these pencils are standard hb pencils which means they're the exact same shade as all the
other pencils that you've probably ever handled in your life so i'm going to test out the african
paduk from guinea everybody take a second this might be life-changing probably not but let's see
so these pencils are a little bit better quality graphite than just a walmart one
the company definitely invested in some good good quality graphite now let's try it
compared to um like a super cheap dollar tree pencil and see if there's a difference there
okay right off the bat they're very very similar back to a trained eye i don't think you would be
able to tell much of a difference however there is one slight little difference okay these expensive
pencils they have way less filler than the cheap dollar one whenever you look at them from an angle
the dollar tree one is much more reflective and it has a lot more scratches in the paper from
just like filler scratching the paper well these pencils my guy they kind of look like a charcoal
pencil it's a lot more shiny it's a lot more smooth much more of the paper is peeking through
the black spots this applies more like a charcoal pencil like a higher quality art tool rather than
just dollar tree you know these pencils are absolutely not art pencils in any way shape or
form but since the inside is just a hunk of pure graphite i have a theory that these pencils can
handle being used for art but i could be wrong they could work just like literally every other
pencil that i've ever used in my life plus it gives me an excuse to draw this beautiful marble
sculpture from the 1920s i truly don't know how these are going to work so let's see how that goes
for some reason i'm like craving um tater tots from my high school is that
and i've been out of high school for a long time but for some reason i just really want to eat
so weird i'm sorry final thoughts i am absolutely in love with the design of these pencils the
smells the wood the little divot inside of the pencil case even the fact that it's made out
of recycled cardboard and this is recycled wood i mean just every little detail about
these pencils is incredible but on the other hand it's a pencil unless you're like myself in a very
specific niche of pencil collecting do i think you need these pencils absolutely not but they
do smell nice if you like obscure art supplies i have a whole entire playlist here of reviews
please be sure to like this video and subscribe it truly truly helps me succeed in youtube again
thank you june's journey for sponsoring this video i encourage you guys to go check it out it really
is a cool game and with that being said i hope you have a good day and i will see you next video bye