Customize Your Stationery
For girls, a big pencil case is essential to store all of these "necessary" items. One primary school girl showed us her heavy, cutely decorated pencil case packed tightly with erasers and rulers, along with the pens and pencils. What on earth are they going to do with all those pens? "I need a lot of pens to make my writing look pretty and stand out when I take notes or write a letter to my friend," said the girl. In short, such an assortment is needed to decorate the pages properly.
Deco Rush decorates the paper with hearts or animals (right) as the tape is pulled across the paper. (Cooperation: PLUS Corporation)
"Deconote," a simple Campus-brand notebook decorated using felt-tip pens and sparkly stickers (Cooperation: Kokuyo S&T Co., Ltd.)
But pens are not the only things that can be used for decorating. Stickers have been around for a long time, but more recently, easy-to-use decoration tape enclosed in a pen-shaped container has become popular. Used like correction tape, as you pull the tape across the paper, in an instant, hearts, stars, flowers or animals are transferred onto the paper.
Both boys and girls attended the workshop held in Sendai. Workshops have been held regularly in the region affected by the earthquake/tsunami disaster. (Cooperation: Kokuyo Co., Ltd)
Many girls use this to decorate the front of their notebooks. One stationery manufacturer held a contest for notebook decoration using the company's top-selling notebook, which had been well received, as it is simple and easy to decorate. They were overwhelmed with the response from school children and adults alike. On another occasion, a workshop held in Sendai, the region struck by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami disaster, was attended by large numbers of children of ages ranging from kindergarten to junior high school, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed making things with the colorful felt pens and pretty stickers. It seems that stationery has the power to really lift one's spirit!
Japanese Stationery—Not Just Cute to Look At
When selecting stationery, it is important that it not only look good, but that it is also easy to use. There are many items with amazing features, such as mechanical pencils with a lead that turns so that it remains sharp at all times, enabling you to write neatly with every stroke; highlighter pens that allow you to see the letters through the window in the pen tip; innovative felt-tip pens and ballpoint pens that can be erased, and much more. You can find an eraser with 28 corners that allows you to erase with great precision, or easy-to-use erasers in the shape of candy or animals. There are even staple-less staplers that small children can use safely.
With these cute and fun-to-use Japanese stationery goods, even school subjects you dislike can become fun to study.
Left: Tasty looking erasers in the shape of confectioneries (Cooperation: Iwako Co., Ltd.)
Right: Kadokeshi plastic eraser. This multi-cornered eraser was selected for the collection at the Museum of Modern Art. (Cooperation: Kokuyo S&T Co., Ltd.)
Harinacs, a revolutionary stapler that can hold pages together without staples. It cuts an arrow shaped hole in the paper and folds back the point of the arrow to bind the papers together. (Cooperation: Kokuyo S&T Co., Ltd.)
(Updated in February 2012)