Maker	Unknown
Model	Unknown
Hardness	Unknown
Features	Gold laquer, pentagonal shape, encouragement
Price I paid	$2.49

When I started dipping my quill into the world of pencils, I didn't think that we had a stationery store around where I lived. I couldn't remember the last time I had seen one or heard about one, and when I put 'stationery store' into my GPS it tried to take me to CVS because they sell index cards and coloring books, or it tries to take me to whatever is left of my local Office Depot.

But I had an unexpected day off and decided to try again out of sheer boredom and a need to get out of the house. I was determined to find something resembling a stationery store even if I had to drive to the next town over to get to it. And this time, the GPS came up with an actual stationery store that was close enough to walk to¹.

The stationery shop had lots of pens, erasers, stickers, paper, and several pencils that I could have bought one of instead of blowing $35.00 on a dozen. I just grabbed a handful of pencils that looked interesting and brought them home to check out. Including one that's a gold color.

The receipt didn't help me identify it. It just said 'gold pencil'.

When I went to take a picture of this pencil, I found out that it's not a hexagonal pencil, it's a pentagonal pencil. Which I didn't notice at first because I'm not usually in the habit of counting the sides of my pencil. I also saw that it had some writing on it that I couldn't immediately translate because my brain doesn't currently have that language pack installed.

It turns out that this is a Gokaku Pencil. Something I had never heard of before.

In Japanese, 'gokaku' (五角) means 'pentagon', and the similar-sounding word 'goukaku' (合格) means 'to pass' as in 'to pass an exam'².

There are two phrases on the pencil:

• 'gōkaku ki gan' (合格祈願) - 'prayer for success in an entrance exam'
• 'gakugyō jō' - (学業成就) - 'academic achievemt'

Taken together, these phrases are encouragemnt, hopes, prayers for the person weilding the pencil to do well when taking a test or an entrance exam or some other academic achievement.

And 'gokaku' (五角), meaning 'pentagon' sounds a lot like 'gōaku' (the 'o' sound is just slightly elongated), so the pencil is shaped like a hexagon that is also a good luck charm to someone taking an exam.

I was going to sharpen this pencil and put it through its paces, but once I found all this out, I hesitated. I think it defeats the entire purpose of this pencil to use it to solve a few Jumble puzzles for fun or to scribble a few words into a notebook. I need to either save this pencil for when I'm doing some kind of exam or I need to pass it along to someone who will be doing those things.

This article was posted on 23 Oct 2026 and I haven't looked at it since.

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