Quickie: Kokuyo Thin Paper for Fountain Penning

Recently someone posted on Mastodon about how they thought Kokuyo Thin paper is like old-school Tomoe River, which really intrigued me, as I like the new Tomoe River (Sanzen) because of how fountain pen inks look on it. I feel like it shows ink attributes most clearly compared with other papers I've used (though I freely admit that I haven't tested a ton of different papers). I also like that line widths don't get wider on Tomoe River as they can on papers like Iroful (I have small handwriting).

Anyway, she graciously sent me a few sheets of Kokuyo Thin paper to test out, and spoiler alert: I like it. 🙂 When I wrote out my list of currently inked pens on a sheet, the paper felt "soft" as if it had a little give, and a bit smoother than the Sanzen Tomoe that I'm used to in my Hobonichi planner.

But that could've been a one-off, or maybe due to whatever writing surface I was using at the time, because when I did some ink swatching today at my desk, I didn't notice too much difference between it and the Sanzen paper I was swatching on. Anyway, I'll play around more with the other test sheets I have, but I'm likely going to buy loose sheets and maybe a notebook from JetPens to have around (not sponsored!).

Here is a scan of some shading ink swatches on the Sanzen (left) and Kokuyo Thin papers (right):

Ink colors and shading are pretty similar between the two papers.

On the back of these pages, there isn't really any bleedthrough except for on the Kokuyo (now on the left), where I let a stray drop of ink just dry without spreading it around. Elsewhere, the heavily swatched inks ghost very noticeably, but did not actually bleed through.

I will try using loose sheets of Kokuyo Thin paper in my discbound notebook for random ink swatching and writing. I'm glad to know of another paper similar to Tomoe River.

I have been using Kokuyo Business paper in my discbound notebook because it has similar ink performance to Tomoe River and is much more affordable when buying it in a ream, but it is a little thicker and I've noticed that sometimes on one side of the page, fountain pen inks will feather, especially when the inks have been in my pen for a while (whereas it wouldn't necessarily feather in my Hobonichi). It just seems a little less consistent compared to Tomoe River in my experience.

If you have any other fountain pen-friendly papers you suggest I try, let me know! I'm still learning about what's out there.