When I was younger I lived in Japan for a year when my dad was stationed on a navy ship in Yokosuka.
Most people I can remember then using "mechanical pencils" had those where there was a stack of maybe 8 pencil tips (lead + plastic casing around it) going down the hollow plastic body, and when the piece broke or wore down too far, you would remove it from the stack and push it back in the top of the pencil to make the next tip available. I hated using them, they always broke, felt bad to use, and if you put it in your pocket the wrong direction you'd stab your hand when you went to grab something.
While exploring downtown on Blue Street (which had a mosaic of blue pebbles mixed into the road itself) we found a huge stationary store where the entire second floor was devoted to writing utensils. I went straight for the pencils section, more specifically, because I'm the kind of person who now uses hackernews, for the mechanical pencils section.
It blew my mind.
This store had everything. Metal pencils, plastic pencils, cheap pencils, expensive pencils, auto rotating lead, shake lead, with grips made of all kinds of materials. I don't remember if I even bought anything then, but what stuck with me was the fact they existed at all.
Later in high school I pissed off my parents by doubling my school supplies cost by making a JetPens account, the online embodiment of that stationary store on Blue St.
I tried a few different brands at first, but eventually the Tombow Zoom 505 Mechanical Pencil (0.5 mm) took the crown as my favorite. There's still one on my desk today.
I almost felt like a different person writing with that pencil. I also started only buying 8.5x11 lined paper because my calc teacher required it, but that added to the experience. I was no longer handing in crumpled pages from a spiral notebook with broken pencil marks all over it, but professional products on crisp full size paper with perfect text.
This started something for me, because ever since I've put a higher priority on what tools I use to make work. I have an happy hacker keyboard, a color graded BenQ photography monitor, and soon planning on upgrading to a stupidly expensive mirrorless camera.
Maybe I'm just making "buying expensive high quality things" into more than it really is, but at least for me it makes a noticeable mental difference when I'm making things and can feel the engineering that went into the tools I'm using.
Thanks for posting this! Brought up a lot of memories obviously lol