Kokuyo Business paper - review

When you have read other blog posts from me I guess you will have noticed my love for Leuchtturm 80gsm paper.

Can`t say anything against it, it is still my favorite paper.

But another paper caught my interest and I really have to say that I like it more and more: The Kokuyo Business Paper.

Kokuyo is a well-known Japanese stationery brand, founded in 1905, they offer well known brands like Jibun Techo (daily and weekly planners) and their wide range of Campus notebooks in various sizes.

Their online-store opens up a world of stationery products: paper, pens, tools, binders, you name it.

I was actually searching for a binder in B5 size and discovered their shop page. I wanted to archive my Leuchtturm B5 pages in a binder to keep trackers of various years together. And, as B5 is a very popular size in Japan, Kokuyo has a lot of binders in B5 size but they are all plastic. I`m not a big fan of these binders, they are very colorful, have see-through covers and even the rings are made out of plastic.

My search for binders brought me to the Muji Online Store and there I found a binder with a card board cover and metal rings. Perfect for archiving! I have to add that I normally try to avoid Chinese products and I would never buying anything on Temu but Muji was the only one to offer a binder in B5 which is not plastic.

But, while searching for any binders, I discovered Kokuyo`s very wide range of paper products. Their Campus range offers really everything, bound, spiral and softring notebooks, and, very important, loose leaf paper in B5 size, already punched for binders with 26 rings.

Klicking through everything I saw their softring business paper which they call "high-grade quality paper". This one sentence caught my attention: "the paper is thicker than standard soft ring notebooks, reducing the risk of ink bleeding through".

Always such a nice information to have, especially as I`m using fountain pens and really really do not like bleeding at all!

The decision was made very fast to order some of the notebooks: B5, 5mm grid layout, 70 sheets (not too thick) and black cover. I added an A5 notebook as well. And some loose-leaf paper as well, just as comparison.

And really, these notebooks do not disappoint at all:

• really classy look, black outside covers with gold print

• black soft rings

• off-white paper

• 5mm grid layout, light lines but still very visible, on both sides of a page

• 70 sheets

• perforated sheets

left B5 size, right A5 size

black cover:

• yes, it is a plastic cover but in a notebook I do not mind, in an archive binder I really want to have something sturdy and not floppy

• the plastic is a non see-through black cover

• sturdy and not too thin, but still bendable

• the notebooks look very similar to Stalogy notebooks, black with gold print, just a ring version and not a bound book

black soft rings:

• soft rings are a very nice thing to have in a notebook, you can open up the notebook so that the pages lie totally flat (flatability 100%) and the rings do not hurt your hands while writing because they are so soft that they are bending when your hand rests on the rings

• the black rings are a perfect match for the black cover

off-white paper:

• the paper itself is an off-white color, kind of like the Hobonichi paper color or Stalogy Paper

• it is not bright white like Archer & Olive paper, nor yellow like Leuchtturm paper or Midori Paper

• very nice to look at and inks look very nice

• I have not found any information about the thickness of the business paper. In comparison to their loose-leaf paper, which is 70gsm, I would say this business paper is 80-90gsm.

grid layout:

• these business notebooks have a 5mm grid layout, I just love it! I don`t like lined pages and dot grid paper. When I draw my trackers on dot-grid paper the dots keep disappearing under my horizontal lines and I cannot draw my vertical lines anymore because I do not see the grids anymore. So no dot-grid pages for me!

• the lines of the grids are thin and light colored, but still very visible. The lines in a Stalogy notebook as just too light for me, when I write with a dark ink the lines kind of fade away on the back side due to the ghosting and I keep on writing somewhere but not within the grid anymore

70 sheets:

• very lovely thin notebook, writing is possible without your hand hanging in the air because a notebook is too thick. Your hand can rest comfortably on the pages or on the table when you write at the bottom of a page

perforated sheets:

• ah, I love this feature. I can tear out any pages with a clean edge, I can archive them (I bought a little punch) or just throw pages away if I don`t like the layout or if I made an mistake

What these notebooks do not have:

these notebooks have no pagination, no index page, no pocket, no closure, no tabs, just a very slim-lined layout

Ink Test:

and yes, before you ask: yes, and again yes, this paper is totally fountain pen friendly!!!!!

I mean, it is Japanese paper and I did not expect anything else, but still, I was so very happy to see that I was able to throw all my inks on this paper and the paper handled all of them beautifully.

• no bleeding, absolutely none

• a tiny bit of ghosting but totally acceptable as this is paper is below 100gsm and it is in the nature of such paper that there is a bit of ghosting.

• the lines of any ink stay crisp, no feathering. I only had a tiny bit of feathering with Kaweco Royal Blue ink, but I have to say that this ink was a very long time in that pen and very saturated, and it was a thick B nib, so I would blame the ink more than the paper

• the colors of inks stay very vibrant. Sometimes on yellow/cream paper the ink color changes a bit but not on this off-white paper

And the feel of writing is great, the paper is smooth, but not glossy smooth, it still gives a bit of a feedback, any nib is not sliding around on this paper but you have good control of your pen.

front side of my trackers in B5 size

back side of my tracker page, a bit of ghosting, but no bleeding

pen test on Kokuyo Business Paper

back side of pen test - no bleeding

close-up of pen test, various fountain pen inks

close-up of pen test, fountain pen inks on Kokuyo Business Paper

Fountain pen inks, gel pens, pigmented inks like Edding 1800 Profipens or Pigma Micron pens, they all work very well on this paper.

What does not work:

felt-tip pens, like Stabilo Pen68, are not working on this paper, they bleed through.

temperature tracker with Stabilo Pen 68

back side, bleeding with Stabilo Pens on Kokuyo Business Paper

As mentioned before I have added the loose-leaf paper as well to my order.

I wanted to see how the thinner paper works with inks and I wanted to try to print on blank paper. I had the idea to use the archive binders as my planner, not just for archiving but for daily use but that binder was just too bulky for daily use. But printing worked very well.

The loose-leaf paper is a bit thinner than the business paper (70gsm instead of 80-90gsm) and therefore has more ghosting but still, both sides of a sheet are totally usable and the ghosting is not overwhelming.

Overall it handles ink perfectly well, only some inks had a tiny tiny bit of bleeding but not while writing but when I colored the boxes, like in my sleep tracker. And, it was an ink which is prone to bleeding, J Herbin Rose Cyclamen (this ink bleeds through nearly all paper). A very similar ink, Tom`s Studio Raspberry Sorbet, behaves much better.

And the loose-leaf paper turns a bit uneven and "crinkly", especially the pages with a lot of ink. Just like the very old Tomoe River Paper, when you have written a lot on a page with ink and then turn the page you hear a "crinkly" sound.

front page of sleep tracker on loose-leaf Kokuyo Paper

back side of sleep tracker on Kokuyo loose-leaf paper, bleeding with JH Rose Cyclamen

paper wave after applying a lot of ink on Kokuyo loose-leaf paper

Overall I can really recommend this Kokuyo Business Paper. It works very well with ink and I like the feeling of writing on this paper.

Right now I just can`t decide on the size! B5, with all my trackers on a double-sided spreed or A5, one monthly tracker per page? Well, we will see in the coming months 😊

Thank you to all, stay healthy and (planner) peace to everyone!

Andrea

PaperPenANALOGUE

P.S. I have bought all my planners and notebooks myself, I paid for them, I state my own personal opinions about them. When you click a link which I have added for you to see the original planners I do not get paid for it.