Daimaru Fujii Central - Lake Shikotsu

Daimaru Fujii Central Lake Shikotsu - Ink drop

Lake Shikotsu is part of an 8-ink series of Hokkaido blues. The inks are made by Sailor for the Daimaru Fujii Central stationery store in Sapporo, Japan. As Hokkaido’s most celebrated stationery store (it is a huge, 5-story store with over 200,000 products), a series on the blues of Hokkaido is fitting. These inks come in Sailor’s iconic vase bottle. In a series like this, the hardest part is choosing the blue for you! This is a very comforting, clean blue, and I really like the choice I made.

Ink Swatches on Cosmo Air Light and Tomoe River

Lake Shikotsu blue is number four in the series. It’s a soft, gentle blue said to match the lake’s clean waters reflected in sunlight. It’s a tranquil blue in personality, which makes it so pleasing. On some papers, such as Tomoe River, it leans slightly slate or grayish blue, but on others you don’t sense grayness as much as a purer, more translucent pale blue. I really like the results on both Iroful and Cosmo Air Light papers. There are subtle variations in shading, like ripples on a calm water’s surface. Stroke edging is crisp and pronounced giving it a clean writing profile.

Ink Swatches on Iroful and Takasago Bank papers

I picked this ink up at the February 2026 STAs Cartoleria Ink Market event in Shinjuku, Tokyo. If you are visiting Sapporo, you can get at Daimaru Fujii Central’s main store or airport branch, but they also offer it online through the main website or on their Rakuten store for JPY 2,200 (USD $14).

Writing sample on Cosmo Air Snow paper

Daimaru Fujii Central Lake Shikotsu - Swatch Card

Daimaru Fujii Central Lake Shikotsu - Comparisons

Daimaru Fujii Central Lake Shikotsu - 50 ml bottle