Tools of the Creative Trade: Japanese Campus Notebooks are Awesome

I’ve written before about my favorite tool of the writing trade, the blue Bic pen that’s been discontinued and that I bought a lifetime supply of on eBay.  Another of my staples is the hardbacked At-a-Glance schedule books I’ve been using since the mid-2010s, but there’s one more essential I discovered after coming to Japan and I’m no longer sure I can live without.

I love plain, simple Japanese Campus notebooks.

Seriously, These Notebooks Are Awesome

Back in the States I used to burn through those simple spiral-bound notebooks, the kind you can buy at any grocery store for under a dollar.  I liked them because they suited my budget, they were easy to find, and they’re unpretentious, leaving me freer to focus on the work at hand rather than a fancy design (no offense to the Bullet Journal crowd).

I tend to use multiple notebooks for different projects: one notebook for MFA Thesis novel, one notebook for my new secret novel, another for agent and small press querying, one for Japanese study, one for miscellaneous projects, etc.  I label them on their front covers and choose a different color for each so I can spot the one I need more easily in my stack.

Then in Japan I discovered the Japanese equivalent: Campus paperbound notebooks.

Like their American spiral-bound brethren, these notebooks are also available in every Japanese supermarket, convenience store, and stationary store, with the writing aisle at my local big box store devoting an entire half aisle to their different styles, shapes, and colors.  I started buying multipacks of them when I came here for a few hundred yen (under $5 US), and I loved how compact and easy they were.

Campus notebooks come in an insane number of sizes and thicknesses (I prefer the standard 30-sheet B size) and two different line widths, A type and B type.  Trial and error drew me to the wider A type where the lines are 7mm apart, as opposed to the super-thin 6mm B type better suited for miniscule Japanese handwriting.  You can buy them in the US on eBay or elsewhere online—though most of the prices are a bit inflated.

Japanese Campus notebooks have a few edges over cheap American notebooks that I’ll dive into one by one….

1. They’re Thinner

When I’m going to my Day Job or someplace to get work done, I’m almost always carrying one—and often three or four—different notebooks.  Having thinner notebooks I can fit into my backpack or messenger bag lets me diversify my workday more easily without overcrowding my bag or breaking my back.

Despite their size, these notebooks are incredibly efficient: each one has thirty lined sheets, leaving me plenty of room to map out a project.

 

2. There’s No Damned Spiral

Again, when you’re bringing multiple notebooks with you, you want something that fits in a bag against a laptop and other books.  Back in high school I used flatbound notebooks with a smooth edge, but found myself drawn to spiral-bound because they were cheaper and easier to find.  It’s nice to have something cheap and easy without that annoying twirl of spiral getting caught on everything.

3. There’s a Neat Line For Writing a Title

This is small, but significant.  See that space in the middle?  That’s where I label each notebook with an easily identifiable name  Of course you can easily write a title on the blank cover of an American notebook, but it comes out looking messier and more crooked than on the Campus cover.

 

4. There’s a Line For the Date

This only comes in handy sometimes, but the header of each Campus notebook page has a small space to write a title and date.  Not only does this keep things neater, it’s a helpful reminder to write down the date when it’s necessary or useful—an ascetic that’s not only smoother, but more efficient.

 

5. The Paper and Cover are Higher Quality

The paper in a cheap American notebook is, well, cheap.  It’s also thin, has three-ring binder holes in it (who the hell uses three-ring binders anymore???) and smudges kind of easily.  A ratty American spiral notebook, sadly, also isn’t the kind of thing I feel comfortable pulling out in a formal meeting when I want to make a good impression.

The Campus paper, however, is thicker, smudges less, and doesn’t have any holes.  The notebook itself also fits that sweet spot between formal and casual, so I feel comfortable using it at both a suit-and-tie Day Job meeting and outside where it’ll get splattered in mud.  This makes them more versatile, and saves me from having to buy different notebook types for different projects.

 

But of course, there are two disadvantages that I’d be remiss not to mention…

 

1. The Pages Don’t Tear Out

Occasionally I find myself needing to tear pages out of a notebook—for example, because I need to give them to someone or I’ve made a mistake.  The advantage to cheap American notebooks is that their pages tear out easily, despite the awful scraps left stuck in the binding of a spiral notebook.

Campus notebook pages, however, don’t tear out—you’ll need an X-Acto knife to get anything close to a clean cut, and even that edge looks pretty terrible.

 

2. They Come With Fewer Pages

There’s a trade-off between thinness and page count with these notebooks, and often when I come to the end of one I REALLY wish they had more than 30 pages—35 maybe?  Or even 32?  Over time this pushes me back to the store for new notebooks more often, and forces me to spread the same project across two or three books.

 

Use Creative Tools You’re Comfortable With

I love these notebooks because they suit my style, my budget, and my way of working, where I’m usually switching between different projects at one time  This makes thin notebooks that are easy to carry incredibly valuable, since they help me work the way I want to.

I’m writing this post not because I want you to run out a buy a bunch of Japanese Campus notebooks (though if you’re in Japan I recommend it!), but because it’s important for creative people to think about the tools of your trade and how they help you.  Musicians have their guitars, painters their easels, and potters their wheels, and we grow accustomed to using these tools because they help us get our creative work done.  We become comfortable with them, then learn to rely on them to the point where they become invisible, which helps us focus more on the work at hand.

If you have a specific kind of notebook you use for your creative work, let me know in the comments, along with why it works for you.  It’s always good to share options, and the advantages of yours might be helpful to someone else!