I love commonplacing and I love Hobonichi. I think the Hobonichi notebook (plain or with cute covers!) is a great choice for a dedicated commonplace book (although I have a tendency to just commonplace in whatever I am 'living in' at the moment, which last year was a Hobonichi Weeks Mega). I personally feel that the beauty and touch of the Tomoe River paper actually helps me stay engaged with my journaling (and I'm not particularly into fountain pens or pretty inks), but I do agree you have to be particular about pens, because a lot of gel pens and even some ballpoints do not work well on this paper. I wield a Uni Jetstream multipen 0.38 for quick jotting, a Tombow Mono drawing pen 01 for when I want the writing really permanent or need to draw a format, Tomobow brush pens for color, and Platinum Curidas EF with Platinum Carbon Black when I do want a fountain pen (mostly for comfort in long writing sessions).