one of the most beloved papers in the world, tomoe river, has gone through a few different recipes/versions recently. this paper is one of the best papers to use for a planner/journal (in many cases, these are the same thing, but a planner usually has a few extra features/pages than a journal), because it is tissue thin and still has some of the best and most colorful ink performance in the world. tomoe river is even popular for watercolor. and then the machines for making that paper stopped being produced, and it got bought out by another company named sanzen.
sanzen tomoe river paper began being utilized in planners like hobonichi, one of the most famous planners on the planet. and in my opinion, the sanzen tomoe river is better than the original tomoe river recipe.
except this year it turns out, a HUGE bad batch of sanzen tomoe river apparently made it through their quality control and is popping up in books for 2025. at the beginning of the month, hobonichi planners went on sale, and people quickly realized that the "fountain pen friendly" hobonichi was being shipped with sanzen tomoe river paper that does NOT take fountain pen ink well. the ink feathers out and bleeds through the page, and this should NOT be happening. worst of all, it only happens in some of these very expensive planners, and there is no way to know without first buying one and then testing it.
in addition to this, the hobonichi servers crashed during the ordering process, and a lot of people had their carts cancelled. and a few days after the messy launch, hobonichi then hiked the price of their products, claiming it was an error to ever sell them so cheap.
but here is the thing. the type of planner that seems to be most affected by the bad batch of paper is the 5 year planner, which is a planner/journal meant to last someone 5 years, and is one of the most expensive planners hobonichi sells. fucking yikes
worst yet is a solid chunk, if not most people, will not even write in their planners until january 1st, 2025 since a ton of people just use them as journals. so they will not know whether or not they got one with bad paper until they start their entry for the first day of the year, which is supposed to be magical.
this problem apparently also affects other planners using the current batch of sanzen tomoe river paper, like the midori hibino.
if you bought hobonichi for 2025, any kind of hobonichi, or any kind of planner that uses tomoe river paper, CHECK YOUR PAPER NOW
dedicate one page to testing the inks you want to use in your notebook just to make sure that you are not disappointed when you go to make your epic entries.
this is incredibly disappointing from everyone involved here. sanzen should have never let this get through their quality control, and neither should have midori or hobonichi.
to my knowledge nobody has made an announcement yet saying they are going to accept returns from the bad batch of paper, and I am not even sure anyone has officially acknowledged that there has been a bad batch of paper, but reach out to whoever you purchased your planners/journals from if you wind up with bad paper. the vast majority of fountain pen inks should not bleed or feather on tomoe river sanzen paper. if you have tomoe river paper from a 2024 planner/journal, use that as reference for how the paper should perform.
just embarrassing all around. sanzen is pretty new to manufacturing tomoe river, and they have already fucked up BAD
gummygunk
theartofmadeline
vaporwave
stormborns
