Itou's are nice, if a bit overboard. Still, nice! Is it your own set? It looks as though there's more than one of the same there. If so, someone must like them a lot
Yeah, I got it from Salty. It has an azurite malachite handle. Pretty cool little guy. Bugger to sharpen though. Not because of the steel, I love sharpening R2. It's the small size and shape that burns me sometimes. The edge doesn't go all the way to the handle, it sort of starts a quarter inch up. But it gets real thick from the handle then suddenly drops in and gets thin at the edge. I sometimes bang this drop part into the stone and it can take you out of the rhythm.
When I was waiting for an Itou to come back in stock at JCK I got impatient and bought a Tanaka R2 ironwood instead. I now prefer the shapes of the Tanaka!
Most of the Itou's came with rough edges so I took a short slicer to 1K and 4K glass stones. No one could accuse me of being more than an adequate sharpener, but within minutes it took a terrific edge that just about fell through grapes. If this is typical of R2... incredible!