Thursday Drops: Mnemosyne A4 Notebooks, Midori Multi-Year Diaries Back in Stock!

I had hoped that a few of these restocks would arrive before the San Francisco Pen Show, but as it turned out, I wouldn’t have been able to fit much into my already-overweight bags anyway! We once again have Mnemosyne spiral-bound notebooks in A4 size, as well as B5 and A5, in most rulings. Also, Midori 10, 5, and 3-Year Diaries are available. Several new shop arrivals are queued up for later this week or early next, including the new TWSBI ECO Indigo Blue with Bronze Trim that’s now available for pre-order. Happy shopping!

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TWSBI’s latest ECO release features bronze trim.

The Gentleman Stationer is an authorized retailer of all brands sold.

1. Maruman Mnemosyne Spiral Bound Notebooks. Stocked in A4, A5, and some B6, Mnemosyne spiral notebooks are among the best out there in terms of fountain pen friendliness. The pages are perforated, which is a huge plus for me personally.

2. Midori MD 10-year, 5-year, and 3-Year Diaries. These excellent hardbound multi-year diaries allow you to view easily view your prior-year’s entries. As you record the events of the day or previous day, you can review what you were doing on the same day as far back as 10 years ago.

3. Laconic Tokyo A5 Notebooks. These slim softcover A5 notebooks come in an array of specialized layouts, ranging from calendar formats to oddball (yet versatile!) rulings such as “Spreadsheet” and “Gantt Chart”. These notebooks will fit standard A5-sized notebook covers such as the Lochby Field Journal.

4. Traveler’s Company Notebook Covers and Refills. We have Standard-sized Traveler’s Notebook Covers back in stock in nearly all colors, including the newly released Olive. Specialty Paper refills such as Lightweight (Tomoe River), Sticker Release, Watercolor, and Sketch are also available.

5. Nakabayashi Notebooks. We’ve gone all-in on Nakabayashi’s excellent paper, including the Logical Prime, Logical Air, and the Yu-Sari variants, all of which handle ink beautifully and feature unique rulings. Their lined ruling is reminiscent of French-Ruled (Seyes) paper!

Thursday Drops: Journaling with Midori MD Multi-Year Diaries

Inspired by the recent release of this book publishing excerpts from nearly 25 years of short, daily journal entries, I picked back up my Midori MD 5-year Diary and started writing in it again. Even though the prior entries on several days went all the way back to 2019, it’s amazing how a few lines prompt fairly vivid recollections. In addition to the 5-Year Diary, Midori makes 10 and 3-year versions as well, all of which are now available.

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The Midori MD Five-Year Diary features five sections per calendar day, for five years of entries.

We have also restocked on Midori MD Paper, standard and cotton, as well as most other Midori stationery products. As featured below, we also offer the latest arrivals from TWSBI plus the 2022 Caran d’Ache limited editions.

A note on holiday shipping. In order to ensure the highest likelihood of delivery by Christmas, please try to get any gift orders in by Monday, December 19 at the absolute latest. This is still not guaranteed, and would strongly recommend that you place orders earlier if at all possible. The T.G.S. Curated Shop is an authorized retailer of all brands sold.

1. Midori Multi-Year Diaries. Available in five-year, ten-year, and three-year versions, these clothbound hardcover diaries feature five, ten, or three sections per calendar day, allowing you to review prior years’ entries as you journal.

2. Midori MD Cotton Notebooks. We have all three sizes of Midori MD Cotton Notebooks available once again, ranging from F0 to F2.

3. Midori MD A4 Notebooks and Covers. The largest of the Midori MD Notebooks offers a massive canvas for writing and/or drawing. We also have covers in stock, including the natural undyed leather version.

4. Midori MD Graphite Pencil Set. The team over at the Well-Appointed Desk recently reviewed the Midori MD Graphite Pencils! While the standard set contains six “B”-grade pencils, we also offer a gift set with different grades of graphite, pencil caps, and a sharpener.

5. Midori MD Colored Pencil Set. Following yet another Well-Appointed Desk review, the Colored Pencil Sets sold out in hours. We received a shipment yesterday and they are restocked.

6. Midori MD Fountain Pens and Limited Edition Fountain Pen Sets. The ever-popular Midori MD Fountain Pen is back, and we still have two remaining limited edition “70th Anniversary” pens with the Midori color-scheme ink.

7. TWSBI Swipe in Ice Blue. The latest TWSBI Swipe is available for sale, with retailers now allowed to accept orders. The pens will ship Friday or Monday, as deliveries have been somewhat delayed, presumably due to holiday craziness.

8. Caran d’Ache “Colour Treasure” 849 Ballpoints. This year’s holiday release features two different versions of a design inspired by Caran d’Ache’s iconic colored pencils: a “warm” tone finish containing orange, pink, and yellow; and a “cool” tone emphasizing blues and greens.

9. Caran d’Ache “Crayons de la Maison Caran d’Ache” Pencil Sets. Paired with a woodsy, patchouli fragrance from Swiss Parfumier Mizansir, this year’s luxury pencil set from Caran d’Ache features two beautiful natural finishes on these poplar-wood pencils, in addition to the typical greens and blues.

10. Caran d’Ache Swisswood Pencil Sets. Looking for the perfect gift for a luxury pencil enthusiast? Try one of these sets, featuring three different Swiss Wood pencils, plus a high-quality sharpener and eraser.

Check out the Holiday Gift Guide, “Gently Used” Page, and Our Sales!

If you’re shopping for gift ideas, be sure to check out the 2022 version of our annual Holiday Gift Guide. You might also find some excellent deals in our “Gently Used” section (due to be refreshed soon, with listed items cycled out), as well as our Sales section of the store that features recent markdowns on items from brands such as Nahvalur and Caran d’Ache.

My 2019 Journaling Setup: Nanami Paper Cafe Note and Midori 5-Years Journal

I was on the Hobonichi Techo bandwagon for a while, using everyone’s favorite A6 Japanese planner as a one-page-a-day journal. I actually have three of them filled up from 2016-2018. Although I liked the Hobonichi, I wanted something slightly less structured, that offered me the flexibility to write more than a page on one day, and sometimes skip a day with less “journaling guilt.” Some days absolutely nothing of note happens, right, much less nothing that justifies wasting a full page of precious Tomoe River!

Enter the Nanami Paper Cafe Note B6. I’ve long enjoyed the Nanami Paper Seven Seas series, both the original “Writer” and the “Crossfield,” but a couple years back they released the “Cafe Note,” which is a smaller Tomoe River notebook measuring roughly 4 x 7 inches in what is referred to as the Japanese “Shinsho” size. You can read more about the background of the notebook on the Nanami Paper website, but what’s notable is that this size book was “created for rail commuters that spend a lot of time standing in trains and hanging out in cafes between trains or after work.” In other words, if you’re looking for a highly portable notebook that’s easy to slip into a bag and write with in a coffee shop, on a train or airplane, or anywhere else space is at a premium, consider the Cafe Note.

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Small grid ruling with lots of boxes for organizing/summarizing notes? Count me in.

This layout works much better for me than the A6 Hobonichi. For starters, I appreciate that the Cafe Note is rather long and narrow, like these hardback Kunisawa “Find” notebooks, since I do much of my writing and note-taking in list or bullet format. Some people dislike the boxes at the top and bottom, but I find it convenient for organizing my notebook entries by date and topic. Finally, the grid/graph ruling is pretty small, but I have small handwriting so it works for me. Nanami Paper makes a lined version if grid isn’t your thing.

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At the end of the day, I did miss having a classic diary or “daily journal” to record the mundane happenings of life. For Christmas my family gave me a Vanness gift card, which I cashed in on a Midori 5-Years Diary. To me, the beauty of this particular journal is how easy it is to use consistently. There’s a page for each day of the month (including February 29 for those years), with each page broken down into five sections containing five lines each. I don’t care how boring the day was, you can always find one thing to record, and I recall that after I had used my old Levenger 5-Year Journal for a few years it was quite enjoyable to write each day’s entry and see exactly what I was doing and/or thinking one or two years earlier. I don’t have a perfect record of daily entries, but I’ve been pretty good so far.

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Noticing a trend here, size-wise?

Takeaways and Where to Buy

This particular setup has worked well for me in 2019, and in all likelihood I will continue it next year. The great thing about the Midori 5-Years Diary is - wait for it - that you only have to purchase it every five years, and the Nanami Paper Cafe Note has so many pages that it will also last you a long time. I do use an annual paper planner, the Jibun Techo 3-in-1 A5 Slim, for tracking tasks and logging things, but I plan to hold the review on that particular tool until the 2020 versions are released in the Fall.

I purchased my Midori 5-Year Diary from Vanness Pens, and it comes with either a red or black cover. At first glance, it’s not inexpensive at $42, but then again you’re only purchasing the Diary once every five years, so that’s $8 annually. The Nanami Paper Cafe Note “Slim B6” can be purchased directly from Nanami Paper, priced at $18, which to me represents an exceptional bargain given that you’re getting 384 pages of Tomoe River Paper. A ruled version is also available. If you’d like to add the Gfeller natural leather cover shown in my pictures, you can purchase it separately for $68.

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