stickers, washi tapes, and more ii: mind wave

Don't you wish you were having half as much fun as these little guys?

Mind Wave has been one of my favorite stationery manufacturers for a while. They specialize largely in what I like to call “mascot” stationery: products that feature a small cast of characters. They make stickers, washi tapes, AirPod covers, even branded Zebra DelGuards and Mildliners. I’m a big fan of Shibanban, a group of shiba inus big and small that get into all kinds of exciting trouble.

A recent addition to the Mind Wave lineup is Kotori Machi, which imagines a peaceful shopping street lined with beloved local stores. The original Kotori Machi “shops” included eight locations: Sunset Bookstore, Fleur Sereine (a flower shop), Pâtisserie Hitokuchi, Kasasagi Coffee, Restaurant Reshipi-tei, Fille Rêveuse (a dress shop), Cinema Scarlet, and Stand Bar 3329. The next four focused on classic and vintage shops, like Sento Yutosoyu (an onsen, or public bath), Kissaten Jiruetto (an old-school tea/coffee shop), Tailor Enaga, and Kasho Tsubame (a wagashi, or traditional Japanese sweets, shop)¹.

For each shop, there are washi tapes, stickers, letter sets, and more. Mind Wave even came out with a juice store and food trucks recently, which you can find here (they're not included on the Kotori Machi landing page yet, oddly).

On the left, sheet stickers from the restaurant and café themes. On the right, flake stickers from the bookstore and café themes.

I ended up getting a small assortment of sheet and flake stickers from three of the shop themes: Sunset Bookstore, Kasasagi Coffee, and Restaurant Reshipi-tei. All of the flake sticker sets include four types of stickers: four large ones with blank spaces for writing, two wide ones that can be used as dividers, three “decoration” stickers, and one that depicts the storefront. They're not washi stickers, but are made from an opaque, slightly textured paper.

The large stickers seem really useful for writing down small coffee shop or book reviews (which is what I plan to do with them!). I think the wide stickers would do well in a Hobonichi Techo Weeks: you could use it to divide up the grid page on the right hand side of a spread. And everyone needs more decorative stickers, in my opinion.

The sheet stickers are exactly what you'd expect. They feature a bunch of related illustrations of coffee and coffee ephemera, or dishes you might find at a Western-inspired Japanese restaurant. I obviously love a good omurice, or a curry, or a shrimp tempura, or a—you know, I think I'm just hungry while I write this.

Comparing the sheet stickers to an A6 notebook. Personally, I feel that they're a better  fit in smaller notebooks.

Of the flake stickers and sheet stickers, I like the flake stickers the most. They fit better in my A5 journal, which is where I tend to use the most stickers. There are also fewer stickers, so it makes me feel like using them up is more achievable. The sheet stickers are smaller, and journaling in an A5 notebook tends to make sheet stickers feel a little like they’re floating in a void. Or maybe I just need to be more conscious about the way I use them…

Next, I’d like to get something from the kissaten-themed collection. From what I understand, the difference between a café and a kissaten is basically extroversion versus introversion: a café can be more like a hangout space for people to gather and talk, while a kissaten is generally regarded as a quiet place for you to relax and sip coffee.

The Kissaten stickers include four large sticker designs (stained glass window, souffle pancakes, coffee jelly, sign board), two wide sticker designs (sugar bowl, soda floats), three decoration sticker designs (coffee cup, matchbox, pudding), and one storefront design².

What would I do with the kissaten stickers? Um, I guess the same thing with the café stickers. Variety is important, okay?

I bought my Kotori Machi stickers in a group buy directly from Japan, but Meowashi does have many of them in stock.

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1. I apologize for any poor translation efforts in this post. I don’t speak Japanese, but I can transcribe characters reasonably well, and decided to stick to Romanization where possible. ↩︎

2. This image is from the Mind Wave website and can be found here. ↩︎