Do memorization highlighter/sheet sets exist in America?

October 31, 2013 9:20 AM

Apparently in Japan, there are these popular memorization aids that consist of a red highlighter pen and a translucent green sheet. You highlight a phrase in red on your notes, then cover the piece of paper with the green sheet. With the green sheet in place, you can read your notes except for the red bits, allowing you to test your ability to recall the occluded information. I've Googled around and found a few manufacturers: Pentel (no longer available for sale), Zebra, and this eBay listing with a Japanese brand name that I can't parse. Does anyone know of any other manufacturers or brands? Does this product exist in America, or will I pretty much have to import it?
posted by lizzicide to Education (8 answers total)

Best answer: I have a bit of an obsession with Japanese pens, and I can say I've never seen this product marketed in the US. My suggestion would be JetPens, but I see you've already found that and it's sold out. You could try calling Kinokuniya in NYC to see if they have it - they have a large selection of Japanese office supplies.
posted by melissasaurus at 9:41 AM on October 31, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I haven't heard of this product specifically, but I think you could kind of cobble together your own out of other office products if you tried. We buy these transparent poly folders at my office, and it looks like there's a green one in the pack you could use. A search for "red highlighter pen" turned up this Stabilo Boss red highlighter (which I kind of want for myself now!). So it might take a little more doing, but I think you can recreate this without a ton of hassle trying to find the original product.
posted by augustimagination at 9:59 AM on October 31, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I can't help with the translucent green sheet part, but I do consider these German Staedtler Textsurfer Highlighters to be the best ever. Pentel makes great stuff sometimes, and I think that Staedtler's office supplies are on that same level of office supply badassery.
posted by oceanjesse at 10:16 AM on October 31, 2013

Best answer: For the green translucent sheet, what about a lighting gel?

They are affordable and come in a wide variety of colors so you could possibly even use different color highlighters/markers too!
posted by donut_princess at 10:31 AM on October 31, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Zebra ships from a warehouse in San Diego, so what's the issue with buying from them?
posted by Dansaman at 10:52 AM on October 31, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Oh totally oceanjesse! Staedtler makes THE BEST PENS hands down. When I was doing topology (a super-visual and picture-filled field of pure mathematics) as a grad student, my colleagues and I all had these wonderful 10-packs of Staedtler colored pens so we could draw all our weird diagrams in the necessary rainbow colors. Man, I miss that.

That highlighter pack + a multipack of various poly folder colors should help you find a color combo that works for your purpose.
posted by augustimagination at 11:22 AM on October 31, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I purchased one of these more than five years ago at a Kinokuniya bookstore in Portland. I didn't realize they are a national chain, but that's definitely a great place to look for it. Although I think you might as well just buy it online from one of the sites you already found, or make it yourself like others have suggested.
posted by thepdm at 3:16 PM on October 31, 2013

Best answer: I have successfully made a set of these myself, using a sheet of red plastic (cut from a red plastic file something like this), and a red pen I had lying around. When I lay the red plastic over the page with black and red text (red from my red pen), the red text is invisible. With a green sheet over a red highlight, I suspect you'll get a black box obscuring the text. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that you can, as augustimagination suggests, make this yourself from stuff you already have lying around your house, or readily available at a generic office supply store.
posted by segatakai at 7:15 PM on October 31, 2013