How Team Yoseka Uses Our Hobonichi Planners!

With planner season around the corner and Hobonichi Day (September 1st) in just a couple of weeks, I thought it would be a great time for some of our team members to share how we use our Hobonichi planners! I swear using a Hobonichi is not a requirement when I am looking to add to our team, but it does seem that a whole lot of us have chosen Hobonichi planners this past year.

In this blogpost, you'll hear from myself (Daisy), Neil, Ashley, Christine and Amy. We each use our own Hobonichi planners in different ways and we're excited to share more about that with you. But first, I thought a brief explanation of the different types of Hobonichi planner formats might be helpful:

Hobonichi Techo Original 

A6 One page a day planner with yearly and monthly view

Hobonichi Techo Cousin 

A5 One page a day planner with yearly, monthly and weekly views

Hobonichi Techo Original & Cousin Avec - A6/A5

Same as Hobonichi Techo Original but split into two books for the first and second halves of the year

Hobonichi Weeks & Hobonichi Weeks Mega 

Weekly planner with monthly view with days of the week in block format going down the left page and grid space for writing on the right page. Weeks Mega has more free grid pages in the back.

Hobonichi Weekly

A6 Weekly planner with vertical days and timeline 

Hobonichi 5 Year

A5/A6 5 year diary where you come back to the same page each day across five years

This year, our team members have been using the following planners and below, you'll find a little bit about how we've each been using our Hobonichis.

• Amy - Hobonichi Cousin Techo Avec
• Ashley - Hobonichi Original Techo 
• Christine - Hobonichi 5 Year Techo  
• Neil - Hobonichi Cousin Avec 
• Daisy - Hobonichi Techo Planner & Weeks

Amy: From Bullet Journaling in Leuchtturm to Hobonichi Techo Cousin

Amy uses a Hobonichi Techo Cousin Avec with Taiyo Matsumoto’s Cat Over Kanda cover and the Hobonichi Cover on Cover, pictured here:

I came to the Hobonichi from Leuchtturm dotted notebooks, which I used for bullet journaling for a while. This is actually my first year using a Hobonichi, so I’m still figuring out my ideal uses for it. For me, the Hobonichi strikes a perfect balance between flexibility and convenience; I used to sometimes grow tired of re-outlining my monthly and weekly spreads in my Leuchtturm, so Hobonichi’s printed layouts save a lot of time and are simple enough still be highly customizable. Currently, aside from the daily pages, which I use for daily journaling (previously, I did this in a separate notebook, so this has streamlined my daily carries a lot), my most used pages are the weekly spreads. In these, I use the top portion of the hourly schedule (hours when I’m usually sleeping) to list events and daily tasks; I like to color-code my commitments during the day with Zebra Mildliners. The lefthand column lists weekly priorities and less time-dependent tasks, and at the bottom of the page (hours when I’m also hopefully sleeping) I sometimes list things that happened during the day or make health or other notes. I also keep an A5 Hobonichi Memo Pad in the back pocket for stray notes on the go and testing pens, pencils, and inks!

Neil: Prioritizing To Dos On A Single Page 

Neil uses a Hobonichi Techo Cousin Avec.

Hi everyone! Neil here. I’m currently using a Hobonichi A5 Cousin Avec. My main usage of planner is daily planning. I write down checklist of todos and daily priorities. Each day, I start my day with a few minutes to plan out a list of priorities. Throughout the day, I check them off as I work through them. Occasionally, more todos and chores arise as I work through the priorities, so on many of my daily pages, you can also find a side todo list with smaller chores or fun ideas that I’d like to dive into in the future. Aside from using my Hobonichi to plan daily todos, I sometimes use weekly, and monthly as a way to plan ahead of longer projects. Working with a limited writing space helps me focus on priorities, and I find it very satisfying to check off everything I set out to do at the beginning of the day : ) 

Daisy: Pretty Daily Journaling Feels Right in a Beautiful Planner

Daisy uses a Hobonichi Techo Original Planner with a Leather TS Basic - Black Cover and most of the time, keeps a TWSBI or Sailor fountain pen in the pen loop.

This is my third year of using the Hobonichi Techo Original Planner as my primary planner and each year, I've experimented with different ways of using it. My first year, I tried really hard to stick with the planner format. I added a left margin on each page and used the timeline feature on each daily page to log my activities. On the right side of the margin, I would write my daily to-dos for work, jot down appointments, birthdays and anything else going on in the day. In the bottom half of the page, I would usually journal about one paragraph's worth of a reflection on the day and on the bottom three lines of each page, I wrote down what I ate for each of my three meals. 

Over the three years and I think especially right after the time Jacob was born, I began to crave for more space to journal so my left margin became smaller and my daily to do list at the top of page began to shrink in order to make space for more room for my jumbling thoughts! Today, I happily use my Hobonichi as a journal on the daily pages. I've separated out my work to dos into another notebook altogether and realized this is quite perfect for me because I don't always have time to make my work to do lists as beautiful as they would deserve to be in a Hobonichi. Something about the layout, the book itself, the paper really make me want to make a perfect to do list and that wasn't realistic for me at work. But every night (or most nights if I'm being honest) I sit down with my Hobonichi and I write about my day. I'm able to take my time, use a pretty ink, decorate with stickers and stamps to my heart's content and for me, this has been a very fulfilling way to use my Hobonichi. Oh, and the monthly pages? I completely neglect those and that's perfectly fine with me. 

I also use the back of my Hobonichi in the dot grid pages that come with the book to track my ink colors, jot down my ideas, and keep track of things like my resolutions that I set for the year. 

Daisy: Tracking Jacob's First Year and All Its Twists and Turns

Daisy uses a Hobonichi Weeks - 365 Days Cover and the colorful index stickers that came with it.

Years ago, I spoke to a customer who visited our shop and was shopping for a gift for her daughter who had just had a baby. She ended up getting her a Midori 5 Year Diary for her to use as a diary for her baby. The idea always stuck with me and when I was pregnant and we were nearing planner season last year, I knew I wanted to do something similar but wasn't sure if I could commit to 5 years. I went with the Hobonichi Weeks as a baby diary for Jacob because it has a very small amount of space for each day and it ended up being the perfect amount of room to write a couple of sentences for Jacob. I skip some days and on other days I go over the amount of room and it ends up all evening out. I've used this book to track Jacob's firsts as well as daily highlights and struggles. When Jacob was a newborn, there were so many moments that I wanted to remember and I didn't have time to write down. Now, I log these moments in Jacob's baby diary as highlights and it gives me immense joy because I'm already able to flip back through the pages and skim through the highlights to bring me right back to that moment. 

I love that the Hobonichi Weeks has bookmark tassels for you to easily find the page you are looking for. A little thing like this has really helped me to stay consistent with writing in both of my planners. The Hobonichi Techo Original does not come with tassels but I use a cover that has tassels. 

Christine: The Challenge of Keeping Consistent and a Plan for 2023!  

Christine uses Hobonichi 5 Year Techo (A6).

I've been debating getting a 5 Year Techo ever since I saw Penri start using one back in 2019. I love the idea of writing on the same page for 5 years and being able to relive your memories from that specific day. And since I turned 30 this year, I thought it would be the perfect time start a 5 Year Techo! I use mine as a journal; each day I try to write a few sentences about or doodle what I did that day. But don't be fooled! I rarely write in my 5 Year Techo more than two days in a row, so I end up missing a lot of days. To be honest, it's really hard to stay up to date with it. However, the way I'm going to make up for it is to extend 2023's entry back up into 2022's empty space so it doesn't look so empty. 

Ashley: Personal Life Journaling and Treating the Dates as Ballparks

Ashley uses a Hobonichi Techo Planner A6 with Taiyo Matsumoto’s Cat Over Kanda cover and the Hobonichi Cover on Cover and her Yoseka Origin Fountain Pen with freshly ground nib by CY.

This has been my second year using the Hobonichi Techo Planner (A6), and I love it! I first fell in love with the planner after experiencing the aftermath of Hobonichi Day in 2020 when I first started working at Yoseka. In 2021, I had used my Techo as a halfway point between a planner for my appointments and a daily journal. I would use the monthly calendar section to write-in birthdays, holidays, and habit track with Frixion Stamps. For this year, I fully committed to using my Hobonichi as a personal life journal and relegated appointments and work to-do’s to a second planner. 

The stunningly lightweight Tomoe River Paper is truly my favorite feature of the book as it allows my thoughts to flow smoothly with any fountain pen & ink I’m using, and it never bulks up no matter how many things I paste onto the pages. I like to create mini collages in page corners and turn two days worth of pages into a full spread. The dates on the pages are merely ballparks for my journaling, and it doesn’t bother me too much if I skip a day or have one day roll-over onto two or three pages. For blank pages, I go back and use them as doodle pages and sketch whatever I want on them. I enjoy being able to flip through at the end of the year and reflect on the chunks of time that are visible in my writing (or lack thereof). Many blank pages in a row mean I was probably sick. Pages of sketches and collages show that I was inspired during that time. Pages that turn out half-completed or undecorated simply mean that I was busy. I find that this mindset has taken a lot of pressure off of myself trying to keep up with hours worth of collaging, writing, and drawing on every single page every single day. Besides the daily pages, I like to use the back note paper as an ephemera collection of stamps or anything else that didn’t fit the vibe of my daily pages. Many things that I collect can be found sitting in the pockets of my Cat Over Kanda Cover alongside my emergency collage stickers. I’m excited to make 2023 my third year using the Techo Planner and continue using it exclusively as my personal life log, journal, and sketch pad.

There you have it! A snapshot of how everyone on our team uses a Hobonichi planner! Of course, May, Authan, Alex and Bethany use non-Hobonichi planners, but you can let us know if you'd like to hear from them in a future blogpost. 

2023 Hobonichi Planners will be released on our online shop at midnight EST on 9/1/22. We are so excited for our fifth year of Hobonichi planners and what an honor and privilege to be able to provide you all with these special life tools you'll be using throughout the next year. 

Which planner(s) are you all thinking about this year? If you're still deciding, hopefully you can get some ideas from our 2023 Planners tab.