Midori Scene Book Dot Grid Journal

The Midori Scene Book is an undated Japanese dot grid journal from Midori with a soft, hand-drawn scene printed across all of its writing pages. Instead of facing a blank white page, you write over a gentle sky, sunlight falling through leaves, or a field of wildflowers, which eases the pressure of an empty page and lets you begin with a single line about how you feel today.

Choose from three designs. Sky shows clouds drifting and colors shifting gradually across four spread designs. Komorebi, the Japanese word for sunlight filtering through trees, shows light between leaves with shadows that seem to sway in the wind, and Wildflowers shows wild flowers and green grass moving in a breeze; each has three spread designs. The journal is a tall shinsho size, a Japanese pocket paperback format, and fits comfortably in the hand.

There are no printed dates, so you can write a few words on some days and as much as you like on others, horizontally or vertically. The package suggests a few ways to begin: the whispers of your heart, organizing your thoughts, putting thoughts into words, or a conversation with yourself. Midori's own tips include writing before bed to look back on the day, or keeping words that stayed with you from a book, a show, or a talk with family and friends.

The pages are white MD Paper, Midori's original writing paper made in Japan, which the company describes as resisting feathering and bleed-through. A 5 mm dot grid gives your lines a subtle guide without breaking up the picture. The pages of each design are printed in just two colors, and Midori adjusted the tones and density many times so the illustration stays behind your handwriting and your words remain easy to read. The journal is thread-sewn so it opens flat, and the last page is a Personal Memo page with fields including your name, address, and start and end dates. The paper cover is foil-stamped with the Scene Book logo, a window combined with an open book.

Midori made the Scene Book for people who would like to keep a journal but feel stuck in front of an empty page. Its idea is printed on the cover: open a page like opening a window. Every illustration was newly drawn by hand for this journal, and the scene changes a little from spread to spread, as if wind and light were gently moving across the page. Midori planned it as a journal that values the time you spend writing, not only the record you leave behind.

Explore more Japanese journals and diaries or the full Midori collection. If you prefer pages without illustrations in a nearly identical size, see the Midori MD Notebook B6 Variant.

Details

• Size: 6.9" × 4.2" × 0.4" (17.6 cm × 10.6 cm × 1.1 cm)
• Weight: 5.4 oz (153 g)
• Pages: 176 pages, 5 mm dot grid, undated
• Paper Type: Midori MD Paper (White)
• Binding: Thread-sewn
• Cover: Paper with foil-stamped logo
• Origin: Made in Japan
• Brand: Midori

The Story of Midori

Midori is a Japanese stationery brand that began in 1950 as a maker of letter paper and envelopes. Its theme is adding color to everyday life through design, and its main products are paper goods for conveying feelings, along with functional stationery that is more fun to use with paper. MD Paper, used in this journal, is the brand's signature writing paper, made for a comfortable writing experience. Today Midori is a product brand of Designphil Inc., based in Tokyo.