Here’s a short one today, regarding a pen I have not picked up in a very long time. I assure you this pen is not from a problematic origin, and in light of recent discussions I’ve queried it quite thoroughly for its political leanings and thus far received absolutely no response. I’m starting to form the conclusion that this may be, in fact, because it can’t talk. I’m not entirely sure.

This is the Ohto F-Lapa, which comes in – or came in – a variety of interesting finishes. Burgundy, brown, blue, that sort of thing. Those colorways are for people who didn’t make the proactive decision to obtain a goddamn disco-ball mirror polished pen that’d present the maximum amount of difficulty in taking detailed photos of it while yammering about it on the internet, a decade after they bought it.

Not that I’d know, or anything.

This silver variant of the F-Lapa might just be the shiniest pen in the universe. Its body is actually quite striking in person. If I had to guess, I’d it’s probably chrome plated. Handle it under bright lights at your own peril.

Despite this, the F-Lapa is and always was a budget pen, but it’s one of the few I can think of off the top of my head that isn’t made out of plastic and is also refreshingly slim. The widest part of its grip section, which is slightly tapered, is only 9.09mm in diameter. That makes it slimmer than most of its peers I can name off the top of my head. I don’t know, really only the Pilot Cavalier leaps to mind as comparable, but even that’s triple the cost.

I’m pretty sure the F-Lapa’s body is aluminum. It’s really light. Only 14.6 grams – just a hair over half an ounce – and that’s fully filled with a typical International Short ink cartridge installed. Thus it’s perfect for the use case I had for it at the time, which was to serve as a cheap daily carry replacement for my aging and continually appreciating in value Sheaffer Targa, while contriving not to look cheap and being compact, light, and easy to carry without making my shirt sag. It also has a clutch fit cap that just pulls off, and isn’t a damn screw-on. These are all plusses in my book for practical daily use. (This was obviously before I developed my current fascination with retractable fountain pens.) But if that’s what you want, too, the F-Lapa has you covered right down to the ground.

If what you want is a flexy, expressive, valuable, or glassy smooth nib, though, this isn’t it. The F-Lapa has a pretty typical steel nib that, frilly decorative scrollwork on it aside, provides completely ordinary performance. It comes with an apparently monomolecular gold coating which on my example wore away pretty quickly with cleaning and so forth, although this didn’t impact the performance any. So even if it’s ugly, it works. This is a “fine” point which runs maybe a touch wider than a typical Asian “fine” pen. I have not been able to verify if this was ever available in any other nib width, but I suspect it was not. It has no flex whatsoever but writes predictably with no trouble. It’s not exceptionally smooth, which I guess is what folks these days call “high feedback” in the same way that back in the 80’s cheap cameras were marketed as “focus free.” I find it nicely controllable and basically zero pressure is required on it to write, which combined with the light weight makes it pleasantly non-fatiguing to use.

Before writing this I hadn’t touched this pen for years and even so, I just jammed a random cartridge in it of unknown brand or origin and it picked right back up writing again as if I’d never put it down. So that’s pretty cool.

The nib purports to have an iridium tip, and is also marked “Germany,” and I can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of either claim. That’s kind of weird for a Japanese pen, but maybe it’s true and that’s why it writes broader than you’d think. I couldn’t tell you.

There are no surprises inside, but that said I’ve always been amused by the ridiculously fine pitch of the threads on its section. It’s the little things in life.

By the way, this is one of those pens where you can carry a spare cartridge behind the one you’ve got installed, tail-to-tail, although only if having it rattle around inside won’t annoy you.

The only other point of note I have about the F-Lapa is that when Ohto refers to it by it’s full title, they consistently call it an “Auto Fountain Pen.” Well, I for one can’t for the life of me figure out what’s supposed to be automatic about it.