A5 Loose Leaf — Kokuyo Vs. Maruman

July 22, 2012

Hello all!

I recently noticed that Jetpens (just a customer blahblah) has not one but two brands of both A5 binders and the loose leaf paper to fill them! For quite some time I'd been looking for an A5 binder, as A5 is pretty much the perfect size for me. For my writing, I use sidebound A5 notebooks, for notes at work I use topbound. I've wanted a binder/loose leaf system to keep my completed(ish) poetry in for readings, etc. So, I ordered the Kokuyo binder (pretty colors!) (and also, much, much cheaper than Maruman's!) as well as some Maruman Giuris paper. The Kokuyo binder comes with 10 sheets of Kokuyo paper, so I figured I could test that and compare it with the Maruman. My results follow, in written and then typed form (I… sort of gave up on paying attention to my handwriting for this exercise…). Two things to note: I incorrectly refer to the Maruman as Mnemosyne the whole time. Mnemosyne is a different line by Maruman, but this paper is Maruman Giuris. My head was not on quite right! Second, this little comparison is not the reviewiest thing in the world, so mods please move it if it's not wholly appropriate for this chunk of FPN. Onward!

This is Mnemosyne [Giuris] A5 loose leaf paper. I guess I should write better in case I put this on the Internet. Did I just capitalize internet? Anyway… I'll be comparing this to Kokuyo A5 loose leaf. Paper [meaning, the Maruman, not all paper!] is smooth, though possibly more textured than the gorgeous Mnemosyne notebooks. Dry time a little faster as well? The holes are squared vs. the circular holes of Kokuyo. Lines are very faint, which I love. Fainted than their notebooks [again, referring to Mnemosyne line]! Use these lines everywhere, Mnemosyne [yikes]! They're also kind of bluish? The top and bottom lines have quarter ticks in them to subtly divide the page. Japanese stationers are so good at things like that. Also, the packaging is incredible. A nice thick zip-loc style bag? For paper? Okay! Dry time not bad at all… but obviously we are still dealing with liquid ink - Alt Goldgrun in this case [note: at this point I tried to smear the 'but obviously,' to no avail]. This is really nice paper, I doubt the Kokuyo will top or even match it.

Here we have Kokuyo Loose leaf paper. It had a more spacious header margin, and the header/footer tick-marks for page division are numerous! They're also confusing. The lines [normal ruling, I'm done with the header at this point] are tighter, and there are more of them *(27 vs. 25) despite the large header. The lines are blue, but darker & far more obvious. The bright blue of the header is obnoxious to me, but then I'm Bleu Azur & not Bay State Blue. Paper is a little smoother to the touch then the Mnemosyne [Giuris], but feels a little more textured through the nib. Also It's giving my nib some trouble… Let me check that it's not the pen… Okay I just tested on other paper, no trouble. Very weird, I wonder if it picks up oil or something? Jeez! Okay I switched to pencil. You can see it was making my M205 EF nib skip a lot [note: possibly the nib or ink is to faulty, but no trouble on Giuris, Mnemosyne, dotpad, webnotebook, Triomphe, or the awful copy paper at the office]! And then I'd have to coax out a ton of ink, and then… The feathers! So many feathers! I'm writing very poorly by now, my apologies. Well, when this paper was behaving, I liked it [note: not as much as the Giuris, though]. But I think the winner here was the Mnemosyne […]. W/ that ink, neither showed through to a fault, exept where there was way too much ink [meaning, on the Kokuyo when it was giving me heartache]. Okay, bye now!

Few closing thoughts… These are both 20-hole punched, with two holes toward the thirds being larger, presumably for some other binder system. If anyone knows where to score a 20-hole punch for A5, I'd be most appreciative! The Kokuyo binder is nice, rather basic. It uses the two-S-shapes-coming-together style of rings, which I moved away from long ago in American Letter sized three-ring binders. We'll see how it plays out. Also, the 'bound' edge and the lower-right edge of the cover tell you what color yours is, for some reason. So, it looks like I have a binder named 'light blue.' Okay, whatever. I'll probably try the Maruman binder some day, but it is spendy! For the price, I think the Kokuyo is perfectly worth it — just get some better paper for it!