Kokuyo Book Weight Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And her latest book, The Atropine Tree, is now available!)

As the end of the year draws near, readers across the world are frantically tearing through their to-read lists in order to meet ambitious reading goals we set for our own darn selves before the arbitrary deadline of the calendar runs out. Or so I hear. Anything that makes the task easier is welcome. This Kokuyo Book Weight helps, though I've found other practical uses for it, as well.

This seagull-shaped book weight is designed to fit the curves of your book pages, weighing them down so that your page stays open neatly for easy reading. The thin design makes it less obtrusive than clip-style book holders. It fits nicely in the margins of the page so it doesn't get in the way of the words.

It comes in three colors. The black one that I received is made of cast iron and has a wonderfully rustic look to it. The rough texture keeps it from sliding on the pages. There is a silver colored one that is also made of a coated iron. Both the iron ones sell for $29. There is also a raw brass one, which sells for $60, which is more than I'd personally want to pay for a book weight, but it's very pretty and screams "welcome to my elegant book parlor." I dig it.

This book weight isn't perfect for all books. Its distinctive mustachio shape works very well with standard hardcover books, or with larger books, but it doesn't work as well with smaller paperbacks. It will still weigh the page open, but the silhouette doesn't fit right, making it less stable.

It is very good for weighing down the pages on books that require you to be hands-free. I've used it for knitting pattern books and cookbooks already, and it was perfect for the task. It will also be amazing to have on hand the next time that I have to type up a handwritten manuscript. I also used it to hold my planner open while a very wet ink took its time drying.

Overall, I think this is a great tool. I'm a fan of page weights, and the one I've been using for the last few years is much wider, which covers part of the text. I have to move it around a bit to get to all the words, which defeats part of its purpose. I don't expect I'll have that problem as often with this one.

I hope you're all enjoying your end-of-the-year reads. Snowy days make me want to read even more, and as it is currently blizzarding out, that's what I'm off to do, with my handy book weight. Happy reading!

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Kokuyo Me 0.5mm Gel Pen Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

It's not often at all that you see a new gel pen manufacturer enter the market. At this point, the big companies that operate in the stationery space already have various ballpoint refill pens available en mass, and they regularly churn new and updated variations on these. Bringing a new, cheap semi-disposable pen to market must be an extraordinarily large cost. So, when I see a pen from a manufacturer that I haven't previously associated with writing instruments, I jump at it.

Kokuyo is near and dear to my heart for the paper products they sell. Their paper is a good "middle of the road" quality, but it's paired with lower prices. It's nearly impossible to compare Japanese stationery culture with the American version, but Kokuyo feels like the ubiquitous brand that you can find at any office supply store. It's nothing special, but it's good at what is does. At any rate, it's about a thousand percent better than the paper products you find at any generic office supply store in the US.

Remember when Moleskine started selling pens? And they turned out to actually be pretty good? Well, that's kind of what's happening here with Kokuyo. The Kokuyo Me gel pen is fairly new, seems like a sleeper, but it actually hangs with the best gel pen options out there.

The Kokuyo Me pens are fairly new for the US market (forgive me if these pens are something that are really old news in Japan!), and I haven't seen much info or reviews on them so far. After trying one out for a while, I can tell you that Kokuyo's gel pen game is strong.

The 0.5mm black gel refill included with this pen is fantastic. It writes instantly and has no issues with starting, skipping, or bleeding. The ink is black and consistent in hue. The line edges are sharp and crisp. The only gripe I have about the refill is that I don't agree with the 0.5mm label they've given it. It's more akin to most 0.7mm refills, but that's a minor gripe.

The shape of the refill is very familiar. It's just a tiny bit different than the common Pilot G-2 refill, but it's essentially a complete match for other common pen/refill types. I've tried swapping with Uni Signos and Zebra Sarasas with great success. In theory, you could use the Kokuyo refill in other pens, or in machined pens made to use specific refills (like the Signo, for example). The only problem is, there aren't a lot of options in terms of Kokuyo's refills at the moment (at least for the US market). Black 0.5mm is the only option, unfortunately. I really hope that Kokuyo expands on their options for refill colors and sizes, but I guess it's still early days.

Getting back to the actual pen body, it's pretty standard fare with a couple of unique touches. The grip section is hard plastic instead of a rubberized, textured grip, and one side of the grip is faceted. This flat side of the grip is a nice place for a finger to rest while writing, but unobtrusive for those that prefer a different grip.

There's also a small round window between the clip and the grip section that shows you the numeric designation of the refill inside. It's easy to see the "05" through the window whether the refill is extended or retracted. This is possible because they've actually printed the 05 on the refill dozens of times to account for basically any possible placement of the refill inside the pen. Seems to me like something that was over-thought or over-designed as it doesn't really provide much value. Most pens in this price range have the refill size printed somewhere on the pen, but I guess being able to see the refill label is more accurate.

The "bell pepper" color I picked is a nice basic green. The pen body color has no bearing on the ink color — they're all black ink refills. There are several other pen body colors to pick from.

Vanness sell the Kokuyo Me gel pens for $4.50, which is in the ballpark for other comparable gel pens from the more well-known brands. Even if it's a little more than some options, I'd still say it's worth checking out. The refill that Kokuyo are using in this pen is promising, and I can't wait to see more options in terms of point size and color. Keep it up, Kokuyo!

(Vanness Pens provided this product at a discount to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Kokuyo Perpanep Notebooks - A Quick Look

(Kimberly (she/her) took the express train down the fountain pen/stationery rabbit hole and doesn't want to be rescued. She can be found on Instagram @allthehobbies because there really are many, many hobbies!.)

Perpanep is a line of 3 notebooks that Kokuyo launched a few years ago. The name Perpanep is a mashup of the words “pen” and “paper”. The papers used for the Perpanep are named Tsurutsuru, Sarasara and Zarazara. Each of these papers have a different texture, more on that in a bit. In addition, these A5 notebooks are offered in 4mm dot grid, 5mm grid and 6mm steno, which is a lined ruling that has a single vertical line through the middle of the page. For this review, I only have the 4mm dot and 5mm grid.

Set of 3 Perpanep Notebooks.

Each notebook comes with 60 unnumbered sheets/120 pages of paper. The notebook has a gray, flexible cardstock cover, and cloth binding tape which allows the notebooks to lay flat. Without the plastic “cover”, there is no decoration, branding or labeling, other than the small icon at the bottom center of the front, which indicates which type of notebook it is. There are 3 parts to that icon - a straight line, a slight wave and zig zags. This is meant to show the paper’s texture - smooth, slight texture, and more texture, respectively. The part of the icon that is in solid white tells you which paper is inside. I kept the thin plastic cover on the notebooks to remind me of the names of the different papers.

Thank goodness for these labels so I could remember which was which! It took me a while to realize that the diagonal lines echo the texture of the paper.

Just the icon at the bottom, which helps you figure out which notebook you have (this one is Tsurutsuru, which has the solid white line on the top part of the icon.)

The notebook’s binding allows it to lay flat when open.

Rather than writing with 48 inked pens, I picked the following pens for writing samples because of their nibs (stub, architect, flex, broad, etc.) or inks (shimmer, sheen, shading). I also picked a sampling of standard pens/markers that I’ve used for index card and similar reviews.

Fountain pens used: Leonardo Momento Zero (Medium), TWSBI 580 ALR (1.1), Pelikan M605 (Spencerian grind - extra extra fine with added flex), Esterbrook Estie (Broad), Leonardo Momento Zero (Fine Cursive Italic Flex from Stylosuite), Montegrappa Mia (Medium Monoc), TWSBI Go (1.1), Leonardo Momento Zero (Medium Architect), Franklin-Christoph 20, 14kt gold BB SIG), Scribo Piuma (Broad flex), Lamy AL-Star (Medium), Sailor Realto (Medium Fine.)

Standard pens/markers used: Tombow ABT Marker (color 245), Retro 51 rollerball, Parker Jotter XL with ballpoint refill, Parker Flighter with 0.7 gel refill, Lamy Tipo, Caran d’Ache ballpoint, Pilot G-2 0.7, Pilot Frixion 0.7, Sakura Micron 05 and Sharpie Fine Point.

Tsurutsuru is the smoothest of the 3 papers and has a slight ivory hue to it. Nibs just glided on them like butter on a hot pan. It was quite pleasant to write on, if you like really smooth paper. It held up to almost every fountain pen ink, except one - De Atramentis Document Turquoise, which isn’t surprising since most DA inks are fairly wet. It showed off shimmer, sheen and shading well. I generally prefer smoother to textured papers, so while this was nice to write on, but it might be a wee bit too slick. It felt a bit more smooth than Rhodia 80gsm or Clairefontaine 90 gsm paper. I don’t really have problems with sweaty hands or hand oils when writing but this might be one of those papers that could be affected by that, so your mileage may vary (or use a blotter sheet under your hand).

Note: Writing samples were used on the back pages of the notebooks so I can still use them from front to back when I’m done with testing it.

Writing samples on Perpanep Tsurutsuru - I don’t know why I wrote so big, lol.

De Atramentis Document Turquoise, used on the top line, bled through. No major ghosting and no bleedthrough with the other pens/inks.

Writing samples continued, along with some more normal sized writing.

No ghosting or bleedthrough on the back of the second page.

Lamy Dark Lilac 2024’s green sheen. I swiped it after it was dry and there was no smearing either.

Writing samples from standard pens and markers.

Is anyone surprised that the Sharpie almost bled through? There is some ghosting with the Retro 51 and Lamy Tipo, but overall the paper handled all the other pens just fine.

Next up is Sarasara, which was actually the first notebook I used because I hadn’t yet figured out the icon’s and what they meant, so I used all of the pens I had initially picked out (minus the Scribo which I added partway). Sarasara is a fairly smooth paper, but has just a wee bit of texture to it. It was very nice writing on it. I didn’t feel like my nibs were sliding all over the place. Like the Tsurutsuru, the only problematic inks/pens were the De Atramentis Document Turquoise and the Sharpie.

Sarasara writing sample.

You can see the bit of bleedthrough from the DA ink at the top and in the bottom ⅓ of the page. The speck of ink near the middle was because I accidentally closed the notebook before the left side had fully dried.

Not quite so gigantic writing on Sarasara.

Again, no major ghosting or bleedthrough.

Lamy Dark Lilac 2024’s greensheen is there but not quite as visible as with Tsurutsuru. The smudge was made before the ink was fully dry.

Everything wrote fine. The ballpoints had just a wee bit of a hard start but it was barely noticeable in the Caran d’Ache.

About the same amount of bleedthrough from the Sharpie on Sarasara as Tsurutsuru.

And lastly we have Zarazara. This was the most textured by far and I knew going into it that I would likely be biased against it because I do have a preference for smoother papers. But I tried my best to be objective and give it a fair shake. Zarazara isn’t just more textured, it’s also a bit more absorbent. The De Atramentis practically wicked itself out of the nib and into the paper. I wondered if the Extra extra fine Spencerian flex would catch on the paper but it did not. In fact none of the pens felt bad on the paper. The paper feels dry, as opposed to slick like the Tsurutsuru. It held up well to fountain pens, but it’s my least favorite of the three.

As soon as I started writing “Perpanep” on the Zarazara, I could see the ink soaking in like a sponge. After a few lines, I had a hunch it would still be fp-friendly, so I trimmed down the number of pens to cover shade, sheen and shimmer.

DA strikes again!

I kept expecting to see feathering but other than the De Atramentis, I didn’t really get that in large or small writing.

Looks good back here!

Even though the paper was able to show shading, sheen and shimmer, it felt like those various properties were a bit subdued, like it was absorbed into the paper. LDL ‘24 is still sheening bright green, just not as much as on the other two papers and it didn’t look quite a metallic.

The rougher texture of Zarazara gave the ballpoints a bit of a hard start but it was fine overall.

Sharpie bleeds through to the backside, as expected.

A few things to note that apply to all of the Perpanep notebooks:

• Minimalist aesthetic - While I appreciate the simplicity of the gray cover and the cleverness of the icon to indicate the paper, it isn’t my personal style, so I would likely cover it up with stickers or put a cover on it. It would have been nice to have different colored covers to distinguish the different notebooks.
• No page numbers - I am used to notebooks and planners that have page numbers but it’s not a big deal breaker for me.
• Pages not easily removed (this is a good thing) - I was a little skeptical of the cloth tape binding and whether paper would get detached easily, so I opened it up to the middle and tried to pull out some pages and was not able to do so. Keep in mind that I haven’t put the notebooks through any rigorous, long-term use, but it did hold up to a few solid tugs.
• Nothing to keep the notebook closed - This version of the Perpanep notebook does not have an elastic or anything else to keep the notebook closed. There is a premium version which has more pages and an elastic closure.

Overall, the paper in all three notebooks behaved well with the exception of Sharpie and a super wet De Atramentis document ink (it’s unclear if other DA inks would behave similarly or if there’s something in their document series that might cause this). My favorite of the three notebooks is Sarasara because it is very smooth with just a bare hint of texture, followed by Tsurutsuru which was very slick. Zarazara was my least favorite but it wasn’t a bad paper by any stretch. It wasn’t unpleasant to use, none of my finer nibs caught on the texture. Zarazara would be good for someone who enjoys paper like MD Cotton and prefers more tooth to their paper.

The Perpanep notebooks are available for $14.25 each from JetPens, who provided these notebooks for review.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)