the japanese stones are glorious to use, but i don't have one of my own..yet. obviously you can't carry them around easily so they're not perfect. I have an arkansas, it's rubbish without having worked up a paste (ahem..with my diamond dmt..), i don't use oil at all anymore, it's too difficult to go back to water once you've tried it on a stone! the DMT isn't perfect either, mine has lost stone from the edges and is not entirely flat so is almost useless for straight edges, so it's used solely for rounded areas now, or mending edges that have burred, but i can't rely on it, certainly not in the field. I've been meaning to get a DC3 stone too for that reason. I've always found workshop oilstones pretty average too.