Review: Kokuyo Campus Todai A4

The Kokuyo Campus Todai A4 held up well after a year of use.

 The unique feature of the Kokuyo Campus "Todai" series is that its horizontal lines are marked with equally spaced dots, so that a page appears to be a regular, lined page but is as functional as a grid and can be used for science and math.

This particular A4 Todai series contains 40 sheets (80 pages) of off-white paper with a slight ivory tint. Glued binding or spiral binding varieties are available, as are 6mm ruled (blue cover) or 7 mm ruled (orange cover).  Looseleaf varieties are also produced, but the quality of paper in the looseleaf A4 size is of different and lower quality than the bound version. The looseleaf A4 is more dry and has more loss of shading than the bound version.  B5 sizes of all varieties are also available in a larger variety of colors; bound B5 seem to contain the same quality of paper as the A4 books, but the quality of looseleaf B5 paper is unknown. The Japanese company site also advertises A4 and B5 notepads, but Jetpens does not carry them. All Todai series books are paperback/softcover.

Smooth, wet writing comes at a cost of long drying time.
Small dots make the lined notebook as functional as a grid.

The book was used extensively as an exercise book for a class.  It held up well under a year of use.  Writing in the book was smooth and wet. There was a very slight loss of shading: ink color stays very faithful but most colors have little sheen.  It is smooth, but more textured than brands like Rhodia or ClaireFontaine.  As usual, smooth wet writing with little loss of shading comes at the cost of drying time, and a blotting sheet might be necessary to speed up drying and prevent transfer to the facing page. One rare occasions, it can pick up oily footprints, but this can be avoided by always using clean hands.   There was minimal see through and never any bleed-through observed through the use of multiple inks, including some that were prone to bleed-through other papers.