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.
i gave up on the hobonichi for a few years, thinking maybe it was too lacking in structure. i tried a million other planners and notebooks, but still, something about the format and the paper and the daily use of the hobonichi stuck with me. in 2024, i got a hobonichi weeks.
this format worked so well for me that year. i kept up with it really well, and also became less precious about missing pages. i started out decorating every page, but i pretty quickly realized that it was significantly more functional for me if i didn't, and just used it as the planner it's intended to be.
for 2025, i ordered another weeks. partially because i didn't have as much to keep up with and partially because i couldn't fit it in the bag i now carry with me everywhere, i failed to keep up with it. what i replaced it with was a moleskine pocket and a bujo pocket. tasks and events went into the bujo, and the moleskine was used for daily journaling.
my wife, mads, also got really into the hobonichi and ordered an a5 day-free. when i realized how consistent i'd been with daily journaling and how much i enjoyed it, and that i was a little jealous of his hobonichi, i decided on ordering an avec! i worked out exactly how i'd utilize it to keep up with my tasks and appointments, as well as journal (mostly) every day.
i started using my avec on july 1st, and so far it's working really well! i haven't missed a day yet, i'm still well organized, and it's significantly better than lugging around 2-3 notebooks.
this all may not sound like a ringing endorsement of the product, but it absolutely is! my personal organization journey has been all over the place, but this is the product i keep coming back to. they're genuinely my favorite notebooks for the quality, the paper, and the versatility. even if daily journaling isn't for you, their regular notebooks use the same tomoe river paper that i adore. i know this reads like an ad, but i'm genuinely just so passionate about these things!
if you've read this far, thank you for getting through me infodumping about paper for 500+ words! paper/notebooks/stationery have been a lifelong special interest for me, so i thought it was about time to dedicate some space to a favorite here. :)