One of the effects of acquiring easy to acquire things like notebooks and cheap pens is that you often don’t remember where you got them, when you got them, or what you intended to use them for when you got them. In my case, I suspect that the allure of smooth paper tricks my brain into imagining uses for the notebook. That, at least, is my explanation for how I acquired the MUJI Blank Tankoubon Notebook. (Note: “tankoubon” means that it’s a standalone book and not part of a series: more on that later.)

It’s a thick notebook with 184 pages of smooth, creamy paper perfect bound between thin, waxy paper covers. It’s designed to be dragged around and filled with sketches and notes and random bits of wisdom. it has a build in ribbon marker and, I suspect, the covers might take stickers and other random sticky things well, although mine only ended up stained with specks of Noodler’s Midway Blue ink. (Long story not worth going into.)

The MUJI Tankoubon. You can see the Midway Blue specks in the distance.

As I’ve mentioned before, I decided to start using it as a daily log/diary, mostly as an excuse to use different pens and inks.

The paper feels terrific, and for the most part is. It is not, however, fountain pen friendly at all. Even find nibs bleed through and I found I had to back each page with a piece of Rhodia notebook paper to keep from staining other pages. The bleed through never stopped me from using each page, but I can see how it would annoy others.

That’s a lot of bleed through. It won’t stop me from using the page, but it might stop others.

The main hassle with it, as with all thick notebooks that don’t lay flat properly, is except for the middle of the book, you always have a large flap of pages trying to crash onto your hand as you write. This gets annoying rather quickly.

After almost a year, the notebook has begun to show its age, and it suffers from my attempts to make it lay flat. The spine has cracked in two places and pages are starting to fall out near the break.

The cracked spine. I’m pretty sure this isn’t my fault.

The pages beginning to fall out as the notebook break in pieces.

Also, the back dozen or so pages are beginning to fall out. I’ll eventually just tear them out and use them as a thinner notebook for testing pens.

The pages will soon become a small testing notebook.

I like the notebook, and if I stuck with pencils and ballpoint pens it would be perfect, especially if I hurried through it.   However, it’s not the style of notebook I prefer these days. There are smaller versions of these–which is odd since it’s supposed to be a “standalone” notebook–with similar covers, paper and place markers that I’ve used and like better. I’ll buy those again, but I won’t get this style again.

The MUJI Blank Tankoubon Notebook is coming to the end of its days. It’s replacement has already been chosen. (Also, next year its replacement’s pages may get scanned and stored in something like Evernote.)