the hobonichi is a planner developed by the team at hobo nikkan itoi shimbun, a website created by shigesato itoi, better known as the creator of the MOTHER series of video games!
the planner features two different calendar views as well as bonus pages in the back like the MY 100 list, a spot for contact information, plans for an emergency, advice on what to write about, and more. its main feature, however, is its daily pages (as featured in the background for this page!) the daily pages show the date, as well as the current moon cycle, with a quote at the bottom and a timeline to the left of the page.
it uses high quality tomoe river paper, which is very smooth and thin, perfect for fountain pens!
it's overall a very functional, versatile planner that i've come to love.
i first found out about the hobonichi when researching personal organization methods for a college class. i started with the bullet journal method and used moleskines, but i'd had some experience with japanese stationery and decided to look into better notebooks.
a reddit post led me to the hobonichi site, and i was immediately charmed by the planner's design. i looked it up on instagram and found people doing some really beautiful, impressive stuff with their page layouts, and i wanted to do the same. however, it would be several years before i would buy my own hobonichi, simply because the shipping from japan to the united states was so expensive.
i finally got my own (an a6 techo) in 2016, as a gift from my wife, and i had no idea what i was doing with it. my spreads were chaotic, i missed a lot of days, and it really made me feel like maybe this wasn't the planner for me. thinking that i was constrained by the small size, i got a cousin a5 for the following year. this worked better for me, but i felt even guilter about missed days and half-filled pages.