LIFE Ramune Notebook Review

Everything old is new again, I guess? New to me anyway.

The LIFE Ramune Notebook is relatively new, launching in the past year or two. But the old part is what’s on the inside, which is LIFE L Writing Paper, which we first reviewed back in 2018.

I didn’t think much more about it then because this paper was packaged as a letter writing pad. Wide lines, fancy borders on some models, traditional lattice pattern paper, etc. Great performance for fountain pens, to be sure, but not my idea of an every day notebook.

Fast forward to my discovery of the Ramune Notebook on JetPens, which not only caught my eye aesthetically, but was made with LIFE L Writing Paper. What is this magic of which I’ve never heard? Yeah, I’m slow sometimes. Eight years in this case.

With that bit of background out of the way, I am impressed with everything about this notebook. I ordered the A6 Graph (there are both A6 and B6 sizes, each in Graph or Lined,) which features wire binding that includes a wrist gap in the middle, making them slightly more left-handed friendly, I guess? Regardless, I like what it adds to the classic design aesthetic.

The Extra Fine Steel nib of the Keyno Fountain Pen.

What does “Ramune” mean in relation to this notebook? Well, I don’t see any liquid, so it’s not the Japanese soft drink, but it could be the bottle color? Another Wikipedia entry mentions Japanese tablet candy, which might explain the lighter shade of Blue. Honestly, I’m not 100% sure, but I’ll take either of those answers for full credit. At least the interior grid matches the light Blue of the cover. It’s a classic color for a grid, but a shade or two lighter than expected.

The super wide and wet Sailor KOP Broad nib.

Back of the above page.

Excellent aesthetics aside, the paper in the inside is the real star. Yes, I incorrectly assumed for a minute this is new LIFE paper. It’s obviously not, but it has been reimagined into more traditional formats, which is also seen in the Cinnamon variant of this model.

I had no issue with any fountain pen, nib, or ink I threw at it, from Extra Fine all the way up to the Broad (and wet,) Sailor King of Pen nib. The page is smooth (the lattice cannot be felt when writing,) and shows off ink color well. The only pen type even close to coming through the back of the page was the Schmidt P8127 Rollerball, and none of the inks feathered. Sharpies are excluded in all of this, but are always fun to throw down for reference.

What are the downsides of the LIFE Ramune Notebook? Two I can think of. One, the aforementioned spiral binding is not good in every situation. I personally wouldn’t want to be pulling it in and out of a bag all of the time, so it will either stay on my desk, or slide into a slim case, alongside some pens.

Secondly, they are slightly pricey. At $9.25 for A6 and $10.50 for B6, with 60 sheets in either size, they are nice as a one-off but could get costly as a go-to notebook that you might burn through. The B6 is a better value per square inch, all things considered.

The LIFE Ramune Notebook is a fantastic overall performer, and I’m glad I finally discovered LIFE L Writing Paper after all of these years. Recommended!

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Midori Yuru (Casual Life) Log Notebook B6 Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Bluesky. And her latest book, The Atropine Tree, is now available!)

The goal of the Midori Yuru Log notebooks is to make journaling more casual. If you're the type of person who worries about ruining your nice notebooks, this might help. The pages were designed to be playful and welcoming to help you overcome your perfectionism. The casual vibe does help with this, but it might actually be too cute to truly erase the fear of ruining it. Notebooks were made to be used, though, and using this one is a delight.

The notebook has a linen textured cardstock cover in a charming cat design. It has 40 sheets of dot-grid MD paper, which is some of the best paper in the world, in my opinion. Each spread of pages has art of cats living their best cat lives, with coffee, plants, books, and even some stationery! The art is super charming and in a colorful but relaxing color palette. The binding is glued, but the notebook does lie flat after a bit of training.

The paper is fantastic, which is what I'd expect from Midori. It's their ivory color, which is my personal favorite. It handles nearly any writing tool you'd like to use with no feathering, bleeding, and very little show-through. You can use both sides of these sheets, giving you a solid 80 pages of adorable, casual journaling.

This notebook is perfect for a commonplace book. Or logging an ongoing list of cute things your cats do. Really, it would work for any purpose. Do you need to add some casual whimsy to your meeting notes? Does your homework lack adorableness? Here's the cure.

The Midori Yuru Log Notebook sells for $14.50, which does feel a little high for a softcover with 40 sheets. The Life B6 notebook, which is just two dollars more, has 100 sheets, for example. And the Kokuyo Campus B6 with 40 sheets is $3. However, neither of these has cute cats. That's a very important difference.

There are quite a few other delightful designs of the Midori Yuru Log Notebook, with several floral designs and some themed ones like travel. If you're stuck staring at a beautiful notebook that feels too formal for your thoughts, give these a try.

(Vanness Pens provided this product at a discount to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Health & Fitness Journal with the Traveler’s Company Free Diary

(Kimberly (she/her) took the express train down the fountain pen/stationery rabbit hole and doesn't want to be rescued. She can be found on Instagram @allthehobbies because there really are many, many hobbies!.)

I have mentioned before that I don’t do a lot of journaling but that doesn’t mean there isn’t stuff outside of my Bullet Journal that I don’t want to track or write about. Since my foot surgery last year, I’ve been working on prioritizing health and fitness, with the hopes of possibly doing a race this year. I didn’t want it to just be about exercise, since there’s more to being healthy than just exercise. To be honest though, I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to write but I thought an undated notebook might be the right place to start.

Cue the Free Diary from TRAVELER’S COMPANY (sorry, I’m gonna only use initial caps from now on cuz I hate yelling, lol). The Traveler’s Company Free Diary (which is not free of cost, but free of dates) comes in two sizes - the regular Traveler’s Notebook (TN) size and the passport size. Both have 32 sheets, or 64 pages - enough for 28 weeks (a little more than half the year), especially helpful if there are weeks that you don’t plan to use it. This review is going to focus on the regular size Free Diary.

The regular size Free Diary comes in two different formats - horizontal (like the Hobonichi Weeks) and vertical. The vertical format is useful if you need time tracking/planning, but since I don’t need that, the horizontal format suits my needs better.

The Traveler’s Company Free Diary 019 refill.

The back side with graphics to illustrate how the refill can be used.

As with many of the TN inserts, the paper is MD Paper. The paper in this insert is a slight cream color, which is fine with me. I do prefer white paper but it isn’t so yellow that I’m bothered by it.

The “title” page of your TN insert - ready for you to customize with name or decorate or both. I haven’t figured out what to put there yet (besides my name) so mine is still empty.

After the title page, there are two blank pages. While it looks like there are grids/columns on the right side, that’s just ghosting from the next two pages. There is a subtle Traveler’s Company logo on the bottom right of the page.

The next 4 pages (2 sheets) have a total of 12 columns for whatever months you want to fill in. This can be useful to see upcoming important dates. If I was training for a big race, I might put some interim races or milestone workouts in this space.

This is what an empty 2-page week looks like. On the left, there are horizontal spaces for your daily entries and on the right, a grid for you to write whatever you like. The lines separating the days extend to the grid side and are slightly darker than the rest of the gridlines.

The top left of each weekly page has a digital-style template for you to fill in the month and year. As you can see, it is a Monday-start and you can write the date above it. I personally would’ve liked the option to have the Mon/Tue/etc blank, in case I only needed to use a few days of the week and save some pages, but that’s just a nitpick on my part.

I have filled in 06 and 2026 in the upper left and the dates for this week. Yes, I’m already behind for this week, lol.

I decided to put translucent stickers on the dates, which gives them a fun little pop of color.

I’ve also used washi tape as a background and applied date stickers on top (stickers were from Shady Pines but they’re no longer available). The covered portions are my weight - sorry, I’m not interested in advertising my weight to the world, lol.

So, what have I been tracking in this insert? My Garmin has a metric called “Body Battery” that measures a bunch of stuff like heart rate, stress, sleep quality, etc. and gives you a score that you start the day with and monitors it throughout the day, which helps you figure out if you need to take a break, if you’re ready for activity, etc. I always jot down the score when I wake up cuz it only goes down from there, unless I take a nap.

I also track weight, while also knowing that it fluctuates daily but for me (and may or may not apply to you), seeing the daily fluctuations tells me if I’m on track. It’s rarely a surprise to see the number go up when I return from travel but it’s nice to see it go down when I’ve been working out a lot or eating better. Which brings me to…

Food - I don’t track everything I eat. I’ve tried it, it does not work for me, and it makes me miserable. But I do track if I had alcohol and whether I had a protein shake for lunch or what I ate for dinner, or if I had a late night snack. Those things usually “show up” on the scale the next day.

Medications/Dr appts - If I have any change in medications, prescriptions, supplements or any doctor/dentist/wellness appointments, I’d jot a note in here - I haven’t jotted down much else besides my uneventful dentist and optometrist appts.

Workouts/movement - Thankfully, I’ve been back to running and am currently running 3-4 times a week and walking on the other days to reach my daily step goal of 7,500 steps (about a 5k or 3.1 miles, give or take). I don’t write a lot of details about every workout but just some quick stats cuz there’s not a lot of room there. And since we all know I can’t stop talking…

The right side of the page is great for me to go into details about the week. Maybe I want to talk about a particularly tough workout, or when I felt really good, or that time when I tripped on a hidden tree root and slammed my body and cheek into the ground (that was a not-good workout). I might also talk about whether my sleep has been suffering (like when I try to breathe at my in-laws at 9000’ (or 2740m)) or any eating challenges/successes. It’s a perfectly sized space since there’s rarely more than 1-2 things I might want to talk about.

You may have also noticed that I’ve slapped a bunch of affirmational/encouraging stickers. We all need encouragement and it’s good for me to see them, even if I’ve had a crappy week/workout. Not to mention, it ups my stickers-used count and using up stickers makes me happy too.

Of course, I couldn’t leave the refill cover unstickered, so I slapped more stickers on the cover too!

I love the messages on these stickers and it reminds me to be kind to myself and that I’m stronger than I sometimes think … and so are you ♥️

Jaclyn Myers of Kaleidocraft will be happy to know that these numbers are going up next month (these tallies were from the end of May.)

I started this refill on February 1st because I didn’t think of doing this until mid-January, lol. But that’s what makes an undated refill perfect for this! You can start any time, skip weeks if needed, and pick up again without wasting pages. I’ve actually been able to mostly keep up with this journal. It helps that I have the health and workout data on Garmin and I jot down dinner notes in my BuJo so I can easily go back to fill stuff in. I’m looking forward to filling out the next 2 months of tracking and then, I get to start a whole new insert.

(Disclaimer: All products are my own. Insert was purchased at Flax Pen to Paper, the sticker/washi trackers are from Kaleidocraft, and stickers are from Happy Planner and from a friend who sent me some).

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Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!