Campus, and its competitor, Kyowa, offer portable, and affordable Japanese paper notebooks for the FP community. I make it a ritual when visiting Oomomo to add one of these notebooks to my basket for checkout.

I looooove the kokuyo notebooks! I have a multipack of the campus soft ring and one of their A5 soft ring books. Campus was def my go to when I was still in school and continues to be a good option for me at work! I just got into fountain pens and find that the paper is almost too smooth for the EF nibs I have. The super thin nib is a little scratchy, as EF nibs are known to be haha. But work amazingly well for the F and M nibs I have. I’m currently using my mine for cursive/handwriting/caligraphy practice. I’m also a huge fan of the dot line ruling they have now. I’m also practicing my Chinese handwriting and the boxes structure is so nice for it!

New subscriber and you videos are informative without being boring. I appreciate the lack of unnecessary words like um, uh, and all the current annoying buzz words so many posters use.
There’s a world of difference between a well prepared, presented, and edited video.
Yours is one of the best channels I’ve watched! Thank you!!!

I love Kokuyo papers in general, and I use them for just about everything.  The only thing I do find is that they are MUCH more sensitive to sweat and hand oils than a more expensive paper.  I will get massive feathering ANYWHERE that I have touched the paper.  I use a cover sheet of scratch paper to rest my wrist on so that I don't get feathering down the center of the page, and I try to always handle them by the edges until I'm done writing on them.

Thanks so much for taking the time to SHOW us how the $2 notebook! I am thankful that I discovered Campus a few years ago! WAY cheaper than others...since I WRITE so much, that is a VERY welcome bonus!

Such an informative video on Campus notebooks! I've been curious about them because I saw them everwhere in stationery shops in Tokyo and they looked so colourful. I learnt a lot from this video, thank you :)

I have been curious about the kokuyo/campus paper. Thank you for science-ing this. Very informative.

Nice coverage of what looks like a very affordable fountain friendly notebook. Thanks for sharing.

I LOVE all my Kokuyo products. They have so many good products. But yes, I have and do use Kokuyo campus notebooks. I love them for like what you said, random notes and mess.

I also really do love them for work. I go for the 4mm grid ones in b6 and I love that I can slip them in my stuff for work meetings since I teach and move all around. Not one I want for personal journals, but they are fantastic.

Cool video. The last stress test was kind of funny, but good to know. and i would say the paper proved to be fountain pen tolerant instead of fountain pen friendly. Have a blessed weekend!

I really like my Campus looseleaf paper. I’ve written out the NT using both sides of the paper. I’ve used all kinds of pens and inks on it. The only bleed through was Shaffer Coffee ink. For me, I go through the paper with transcribing the Bible and I love using this paper. Very affordable and works well with all my fun inks. Highly recommend the looseleaf. The soft ring notebook is also a good option.

I simply love and find Kokuyo Softring notebooks to be one if the best inventios ever and use them i. B5 SIZE. I just wish the paper was a bit better for my wetter fountain pens. Tks for the video, subscribed

Yes, it is.  I've been using the Campus notebook paper for a few weeks.  It's so nice and smooth.  I really do like it for fountain pen, gel, rollers and pencils.

Kokuyo Campus paper is my go to basic paper for fountain pen use.  I prefer the semi B5 in 7mm line spacing size, and they go well with the trifold notebook carrier that folds so that it fits those tiny desks attached to chairs in many classroom settings.

I absolutely love this name brand.  I bought a ream of paper, I guess it’s copy paper ( very HIGH quality) for the price.  The loose leaf ruled Campus paper, I LOOooooooove that paper.

That notebook is definitely a no nonsense brain dump sort of notebook. I have those and the Maruman in loose leaf binder paper and they hold up nicely for notetaking. Some inks shade and some don't but this is the one paper where all your focus is on brain-pen-paper.

I use a kokuyo for ink swatching.

Another really good affordable fountain pen friendly (I think) notebook is the Pen+Gear graph composition notebook. It's handled every ink and pen tip I've thrown at it.

I purchased a pack of them just because I wanted some notebooks for classes but didn't want to get anything with a ton of pages or anything like that, so I figured I would try out them out although I got ones that are B5 I think and have 5mm grid paper. I think the paper is pretty nice, although I'm not very experienced with many different types of paper. When I first wrote on it, I wasn't expecting it to be as smooth as it is. So far, I've been really loving taking notes in it.

The campus Notebook did much better than I expected. I have had mixed results with different Kokuyo products. Some perform very well and some do not. For example, their thin paper just doesn’t handle most fountain pen ink well.

I have quite a few Campus notebooks (as well as other Kokuyo notebooks with different paper - I think they have something like 20 different paper types, maybe even more,) that I’ve used, and I also use their loose leaf and their binders and plastic folders (which are amazing…US office/school supplies, hang your head in shame compared to these folders!)

I like the Campus notebooks that either are glue bound like you’re showing, or with the “soft rings.” I have a B5 soft rings Campus notebook that I use for swatch samples of all of my non-fountain pens, markers, etc, to keep track of what’s what…and to ease picking colors out when needed. Theoretically, this notebook (based on the tabs) is also going to have an imprint of every stamp I have (this was made 2 years ago or so when I had 5 stamps or something) as well as a section for washi - all on 40 sheets. I think the tabs will go, and I will use another Campus notebook for the stamps and a separate one for the washi catalog.

I find the paper to be pleasant to use. I particularly love the Soofa line of notebooks, which, according to Jet Pens uses the same paper as the Campus (although it’s grid - and you can find grid Campus notebooks if you look around.) As a portable “everything” notebook, it looks nice, has a plastic cover to protect it from rain or spills, or just getting bent up in your bag/backpack. It also contains a folder as a part of the back cover, and has at least 80 sheets…it also has a much bigger price tag, but not ridiculous based on the features, construction and thought that went into this notebook.

I don’t expect a lot from the Campus paper - although I get quite a lot, and certainly much more than I would from a Mead notebook! I feel like it fulfills its purpose for its target audience, mainly students, as well as people like us who like to try hundreds of notebooks because we have some kind of crazy paper obsession 😅 (p.s., I love these paper review videos you do.) When I was a student, I needed paper that I could easily take notes on, using my preferred pens, that held up to highlighters and Energels, and fine liners in a variety of colors, and it absolutely does that. As I said, one B5 Campus notebook is the test/swatch book for all of the “non-fountain pens.” Excluding permanent Sharpies, it has held up to all sorts of markers (Staedtler, Uni Pin Pens (Pigment fine liners,) Ohuhu Dual Brush Markers, Tombow Dual Brush Markers, Energels, Paper Mate Flair, and on and on…even the notorious Zigg Dot pens that love to bleed through TRP-S hold up (nearly entirely…there’s always that one color that gets a paper) testing them without bleeding or ghosting so badly you couldn’t create pages of habit trackers, use the Zigg Dots and not be confused in a tracker on the next page. The paper for the price is outstanding!!! I wish it were easier to find in grid because I am not a fan of lined paper at all. (It is available in grid, you have to hunt for it!)

Another “cousin” paper to the Campus is the paper and notebooks Kokuyo makes for those students who have graduated and are moving into the work world: Kokuyo Business Paper (note: there are also Kokuyo Campus Business notebooks…no, I don’t get it either.) Regardless, for a B5, soft rings, perforated 5mm graph paper with a place for date and subject at the top of each page, Kokuyo Business Paper a higher quality than Campus and heavier (85gsm) with a plastic cover in black (looks like a Mnemosyne notebook) it’s also jumped in price to $13.75 (JetPens.) But, an even better deal for Kokuyo Business Paper is that they sell it in reams (like copy paper) in A4, white, 500 sheets of FPF paper - for less that $20 on Amazon. You can use it as copy paper, make notebooks out of it, swatch sheets - ink looks decent on it, and it holds up to dense color printing from an inkjet printer. You can print your own graph paper, dot grid paper, or use templates with it to make inserts for rings. It’s upgraded Campus paper (which is already a nice paper,) and is very versatile, not to mention being an absolute bargain in this format (it fits US printers, just adjust to “A4” paper size in the tray and in the printer’s screen where it detects a paper size change (We have an Epson Eco Tank - I highly recommend them…we’ve had ours over 2 years and it’s printing things all the time - Boomer husband likes ‘paper’ for his CFO duties, lol, and we finally needed a new black tank. With our HP, we were buying ink cartridges for $70-90 a set every 3 months.) Back on topic…

IMO, Kokuyo makes tons of great paper. Campus is nice, affordable, pretty easily accessible in the US (Daiso, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, JetPens, etc) and does it’s job as it’s supposed to, and has a bunch of great products to go along with it to make every student (and human) manage stationery needs effectively.

Thanks so much for the review, sorry for the ramble!! (Oh, they also have a very thin 50gsm approx paper called MIO that they use in the Business version of the Jibun Techo. I’ve never tried it, and it’s not the easiest to get your hands on, but I have heard it’s very good.)