A lot of Pen Addicts are looking for a new favorite paper right now, due to the uncertainty of Tomoe River's future. It can be frustrating when favorite products fade away, but I find a lot of joy in the quest for new favorites, because you have to play. And playing with stationery is the best.
If you're a paper nerd, you probably already have your runners-up to favorites that you can fall back on that are enjoyable and reliable and will do just fine. But one paper brand that doesn't get the paper nerd worship it deserves is Kokuyo. People are starting to pick up on its awesomeness, but I still feel the need to sing its praises from the rooftops because I don't see it mentioned often enough in "I love this paper" discussions.
For all my playing with paper, this is the closest I've found to a substitute for Tomoe paper in thickness, texture, and performance. It doesn't have quite as much of the sheen-popping power of Tomoe, but it has the thin, crispy texture with the ability to handle puddles of ink with no bleedthrough. You can get it in a variety of formats, and it is remarkably inexpensive.
The specific notebook I'm playing with this week is the Twin Ring Edge Title A5 notebook that came with the Systemic cover system I reviewed a few weeks ago. It's a double wire-bound book with 50 sheets in a unique and useful format that is ideal for work, school, or custom planner pages. Each page is divided into sections, with space on the margins for you to add color coding with markers or highlighters. Each section can be assigned to a task, a day, a journal entry, or you can ignore the label spaces and use it as a 6mm lined notebook.
The paper is archival quality, pH neutral, and acid free, so it will never turn yellow or brittle. It has enough texture to handle pencils of any type, and doesn't bleed or feather with any fountain pen I've ever tried. Even marker sits neatly on the surface with very little show-through. The Sharpie bled slightly, only where the tip of the pen paused at the beginnings or ends of letters.
If you are currently on a paper quest, I highly recommend you try this notebook. It's also only $7. If that still feels too steep for an experiment, you can pick up some of their Campus notebooks for around $3, which have the same excellent paper qualities. And don't forget to enjoy the quest! Discovering a new favorite stationery product is always rewarding, but it's rarely as fun as the search itself.
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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