Yu-Sari Notebooks

 

 

We got a new line of notebooks in: Nakabayashi, a company from Japan which has been operating for over 100 years, creating office supplies and stationery.

 

The Yu-sari line of notebooks is the highlight, although the Logical Prime Thread notebooks are great for smaller projects. The Yu-sari notebooks are hefty and 96 pages thick with a high-quality and durable binding. Available in A5 and B5, grid, plain and ruled.

 

 

Excellent paper! Which is its primary selling feature, I think. We sell a variety of notebooks, many of which have very good paper for fountain pens, and some that are—less good. Some of it is a matter of personal preference: the thickness or weight of the paper, its smoothness, ability to also take a pencil, which requires some feedback on the paper.

 

Ultimately, for me as a fountain pen user, paper quality is pretty important for a notebook that I plan on using heavily or will be doing a lot of writing in. I like to pretend to be flexible, but it only lasts so long if my paper is feathering madly underneath my nib. Us fountain pen users are sometimes are a bit pickier about our paper, and this paper is excellent.

 

Here are some writing samples. I did pick some wetter nibs, but realistically I’m not always using super wet nibs as it also takes longer to dry. But the writing is so clean on the page, and even the ink swatch edges were super crispy!

 

The best test is always if the ink will show its sheen, as a paper generally needs to take water-based inks very well for it to dry with a sheen. While the bar for me, for a notebook I’m planning on using as a journal, is whether or not the ink feathers, the way the Yu-sari paper shows sheen is wonderful.

 

 

The paper is very smooth and also available in loose leaf, so you can test the paper and also use it for letter writing, notes, etc.

 

 

It’s been a long time since I inked up my Platinum 3776 Calico. It’s one of my absolute favourite pens, the material is so beautiful and warm and timeless. I sometimes feel like when I’m old and grey and finally ready to let go of my hoards of stationery, this will be one pen I will keep until I die.

 

Not old nor grey yet, so I tend towards more utilitarian pens that I’m not scared to throw about, Safaris and TWSBIs, a Lamy 2000. But befitting a lovely new Japanese notebook, I had to bring out something classic and beautiful to match.

 

 

 

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A new line of notebooks from Japan! What a delight. Even in February, life is not without its tiny feasts.

 

I’ve been looking forward to holding these in my hands and testing them out for myself, but of course I’ll really get to know this notebook when I start one for my next journal and use it day in and day out for a couple of months. I have become both more particular and less particular about my journals the more I come along. Details are important! But also it’s a season of life, each journal, the several months you live while writing in it.

 

You appreciate the particularities of each one, each notebook—the way it lays open flat (or doesn’t), the way the paper holds ink, or feels when you write with a pencil, the quality of the paper cover, the durability of the stitching, whether it has a page marker ribbon, the design on the front cover, the weight of it, the number of pages—and sometimes the idiosyncrasies are things you miss when you move onto the next one. I use a lot of MD and Life notebooks, also Tomoe River and the Hobonichi notebooks (undated/marked), and while there are certain things about each that I appreciate more than the others, I’ve come to realize that each notebook will come to its eventual end and you can enjoy the ride for what it is. Can’t wait to see how this one goes.

 

I guess maybe the real test will come for this Nakabayashi Yu-sari when I try to sort out my stickers on the front cover and see how they look.