bnard893If I'm not wrong, Japanese nibs are about one size smaller, so a medium pilot metropolitan would be a Fine nib for Lamy 2000. I'm using a fine Vanishing Point and it's close to the extra fine on my Lamy Safari.
ShumonkeyI think that the Metro is just what they call the Cacoon in the U.S. I don't think that the Cacoon is different or any fancier, except that there may be more finishes available in Japan. Any pen sold as the Cacoon costs more in the U.S. simply because it's a gray market import.
The Cacoon and the Metro have never been seen together in the same room: Pilot lists the Cacoon on its Japanese website, and the Metro on the U.S. website.
http://www.pilot.co.jp/products/pen/fountain/
http://pilotpen.us/categories/fountain-pens/
ShumonkeyI live in Japan and have two Cacoons from Amazon.co.jp, fine and medium, both white metal finish, so I have to peek at the nibs to figure out which is which. I dropped my medium on the nib and had to bend it back into shape: it's about 95% back to normal. But in the process of doing that and looking at it under magnification, I realized that it had worn down quite a bit, and I only use it for short daily journal entries. So I started to use the fine, and before long it wore down to what the medium was originally, and that's what I mostly use now.
By the way, for some reason Japanese television shows frequently feature fountain pen repair gurus. From those I learned that the "gold" on gold nibs is just decorative and isn't on the part that does the writing. And I learned that when they fix a nib, they replace the broken part with a solid nib, and then saw the slot in it at the end, rather than trying to add just a new half for the broken part.