It's finally here. Customs took forever.
I got the Mother 2 cover, the english planner and the japanese avec planner which splits the year in two books. Haven't decided yet which one I will actually use but probably both in the end
I love the sticker.
L to R: 2015 Cousin, 2017 Avec Cousin, 2016 Techo
I was hesitant to put my name forward, because I live in Japan and it would be absolutely silly to have a planner shipped from Japan to the US and then back again. I don't know if it's possible to purchase a planner for Japan (on the Japanese site) from overseas.Reminder that I am giving away a Techo + cover! I was given a really really nice pen by a member of our community and I want to kind of pass the good vibes along.
I had given a vague "early October" end date. I'll go ahead and say that I'll pick a name on November 1st.
So something I started doing this year was keeping a handwritten journal/diary in Japanese. In order to incentivize it a bit, I spent a bit of money to get a Hobonichi Techo (that's 手帳, or てちょう - not てこ with a nifty Mother 2 (Earthbound) cover and some decent pens and stuff. It started off pretty strong in January and February with daily entries, tapered off through March and then had an extremely shameful dry spell from April through mid-August. I was absurdly busy during that time and instead of chronicling it, I just got lazy and didn't feel up to writing it all down. I'm really regretting it now, and I've committed to writing something down each day for the rest of the year - for real this time. I take it with me everywhere I go and jot a few words down whenever I have a gap in my day.
I bring this up because I thought that some other people might be interested in doing something similar, and the 2017 Hobonichi Techos just went up for sale (English store || Japanese store). They're great little journals/day-planners with a ton of neat design features, plus they come with a little quotation or excerpt from something each day written in Japanese. We've got a thread for the planners on GAF, and it links to last year's (which links to 2015's) so you can take a look at why they're neat and what people do with them.
If you've never journaled in Japanese before, it's definitely worth doing. It's a great way to practice organizing your thoughts and forming nicer sentences, practice casual form and language that you don't get a chance to use in polite conversation, and generally just fool around with the language. If, like me, you've tried in the past and stalled out, perhaps the fact that you have this nifty little planner with nifty little tools that you spent a moderate sum on will motivate you to make more use of it. Or at the very least make you feel that much guiltier if you don't (again, like me).
broke down and ordered it with the memories cover even though I tried to ignore it for the past few years.
I bought some fountain pens but I seem to have a problem keeping the nibs neat. It seems like ink smears over the metal. Is that a common problem? Is there a way to alleviate it?
This is actually extremely common! "Nib Creep" is just a side effect of the way some inks behave, and won't have any negative effects on your pen over time.
GAF, what have I done!? I just bought my first Hobonichi Planner ever. I can't believe I spent $47 dollars on a goddamn glorified notebook and its fancy cover. WHAT HAVE I DONE?
GAF, what have I done!? I just bought my first Hobonichi Planner ever. I can't believe I spent $47 dollars on a goddamn glorified notebook and its fancy cover. WHAT HAVE I DONE?
Welcome to the club.
Whats so great about fountain pens and Hobonichis? All i hear about fountain pens are the leaking nightmares and the points being finicky. Cartridge this, inkwell that. It sounds incredibly inefficient and cumbersome.
Whats so great about fountain pens and Hobonichis? All i hear about fountain pens are the leaking nightmares and the points being finicky. Cartridge this, inkwell that. It sounds incredibly inefficient and cumbersome.
Whats so great about fountain pens and Hobonichis? All i hear about fountain pens are the leaking nightmares and the points being finicky. Cartridge this, inkwell that. It sounds incredibly inefficient and cumbersome.
You could ignore dates if you wanted to and treat the book like a sketchbook or notebook if you wanted to! There's no hard and fast rules that force you to use the Hobonichi a certain way, and the pages are mostly an open grid to let you choose how to get the most out of it. If you're really sure that you want just a notebook with Tomoe River paper, there's always the Nanami Paper Seven Seas notebooks! They come in three styles-
- Writer, featuring lined paper.
- Standard, with blank pages.
- Crossfield, which uses a hybrid dot-grid/line grid style, seen below:
I have a second or third generation "Writer" notebook, which was the perfect companion to my Hobonichi. Since they're printed and cut into the A5 paper size, you could always buy a Hobonichi Cousin cover to add a little flavor to it, which is what I did! Nanami Paper's store is closed for another few weeks, but they have some Crossfield and Standard editions for sale through Amazon, if you don't want to keep waiting.
I ordered a pen at the same time, and some stickers and stuff I'm expecting to use to tape things into it at some point this year.
And once I put it together.
It's a lot lighter than I expected, actually. Now I need to spend some time planning out how to use my planner.
I'm really looking forward to start using this in a few days. And as if my exitment couldn't get any bigger I just got this for Christmas.
Ordered one of these for my wife for her Birthday that's coming up.
What's a good fountain pen to use?
Hello Hobonichi folks. I guess I've come to join you
I paged through the other threads after seeing this one go up earlier this year, and on Black Friday I finally gave in and treated myself.
It showed up today and I'm kind of excited, so I took some awful mobile phone pictures and thought I'd share them!
I ordered a pen at the same time, and some stickers and stuff I'm expecting to use to tape things into it at some point this year.
I ordered from The Journal Shop, so I was a little limited cover wise but the plain covers are pretty cool too. I'd been umm-ing and aah-ing between Cherry Pink and Sherbet for a while, but by the time the site loaded for me after the sale started the choice had been made for me. Cherry Pink it is
And once I put it together.
It's a lot lighter than I expected, actually. Now I need to spend some time planning out how to use my planner.
TJS were pretty great too. I picked free postage but they sent it tracked and signed for anyway. I get that they were probably doing it to cover their own backs more than anything else but I appreciated it and it meant I got it really fast
And a couple of pen pics too, just because.
For those in NYC, they sell these in Kinokinuya Bookstore off Bryant Park.
Nice if you're impatient.