(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)
The Kokuyo ME Notebook is an A5-sized (210 x 148 mm), seventy-page ruled notebook. The cover is made of shiny cardstock with a geometrical pattern and copper/gold tape on the spine.
It is perfect bound, which means that the book block of single pages (rather than sewn signatures) is glued into the casing. With some pressure, you can get the notebook to lie flat.
I couldn't find any information about the kind of paper used in this notebook or its weight. It feels thicker than Tomoe River Paper. It is off-white with 6mm ruled lines in grey. The top of each page is labeled with "Title," and the bottom has a place for the date.
The paper is smooth to the touch, but when I wrote my long writing sample, I noticed a tiny bit of tooth. I wasn't bothered by this at all. In fact, I liked the fact that there was some resistance under my nib.
I tested the paper with ten different fountain pens and inks. Although it handled fine and medium nibs well, there was a tiny bit of bleed through with wetter inks and show through is quite visible.
Swabs cause the paper to buckle. The ink looks good and you can see varying shades and pooling. The paper brings out a little sheen in the inks and some bleed through occurred.
I also tested various pens and pencils. The Sharpie Ultra Fine Point bled through and show through was visible for most of the pens.
The Kokuyo Notebook is lightweight and can get bent with normal use. The binding tape pulls away easily, though the glued spine seems fairly stable.
The paper in the Kokuyo notebook is pleasant to write on, but it does exhibit both bleed through and show through with some inks and nibs. I'm not impressed with the notebook's construction. If it is thrown in a bag with other books, it will get beat up pretty quickly.
This notebook is available at Vanness Pens for $6.75.
(Vanness Pens provided the Kokuyo Notebook free of charge to Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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