Typewriter

I've always wanted a manual typewriter and this week I bought this one from eBay seller vildanden07 -- I went to his flat to pick it up and he was a very nice chap, helpful and informative, A1 seller +++++ and everything.

I think it's beautiful, the front reminds me of a vintage car.  It types well but it needs a new ribbon and a careful clean.  There isn't a model number, all I can tell about it is that it was made in Nagoya, Japan, I'm guessing in the early 1960s because there's something rather Mad Men about the style.

I used to bash away on my mum's typewriter when I was little but I'd forgotten how hard and slowly you have to type, and how nasty it is getting your finger stuck between the keys!  Maybe I should wear thin gloves.  Anyway, looking forward to getting it up and running.   It feels very satisfying to have such a physical interaction with a machine like this, technology is so sleek now, a swipe of the finger across the touchscreen, a fluttering of the fingers across the keyboard.  Here's to thumping away at real metal keys and getting inky fingers.

The exposed belly of the beast.

When I lifted the lid, I saw this scratched very faintly into the metal.  I wonder what it says?  I can't read Kanji but I thought it might say 'Made in Japan', or maybe it records the name of the factory-worker who built it or its first owner.  My friend passed the query on to various bilingual folk but they all say it's too faint to decipher.