A few months ago, I placed an order at Yoseka Stationery, which was originally founded in Taiwan almost 40 years ago, but is now in Brooklyn, New York. Yoseka’s blog says its moving its physical store, which I’m not too surprised about given how COVID19 has upended brick and mortar retail. If I were in NYC, this place would be on my list to check out if I happened to be in Brooklyn.

Anyway, I’m a sucker for Asian stationery products/stores. I even enjoy browsing the small stationery section at Daiso.

I’m not too picky about paper and will readily use what’s put in front of me, but I do prefer the nicer stuff like Rhodia or Maruman Mnemosyne because fountain pen ink doesn’t bleed and your nibs glide across so effortlessly. Nice paper is one of the little things that makes a difference to a pen geek.

I am always taking notes while on a Zoom or a conference call and usually keep a notepad handy. I saw this cute checkbook-ish Lined Note pad from Yoseka and added it to my order.

The pad has 100 sheets of paper. It’s very smooth and high quality paper, perfect for taking quick notes, jotting down a short recipe, making a grocery list, adding a short hand written note that you clip to a typed document, etc.

I tested it with two of my currently inked fountain pens, but I have used this notepad successfully with a bunch of other inks without any issues with bleeding or feathering. $5 for a cute little notepad that works well with fountain pens and highly pigmented inks seems perfectly reasonable.