Hobonichi Techo Cousin First Impressions

April 10, 2018

That’s right, another Hobonichi!

I just couldn’t stop at the Weeks I reviewed a little while ago. Like the Weeks, I purchased the Spring start Cousin which is the A5 sized Hobo. Unfortunately, unlike the Weeks it did actually start in April (boo).

You get so much in this planner and yet, it doesn’t look that bulky at all! It’s less than three quarters of an inch in thickness and yet manages to pack in:

Year at a glance pages for 2017 – 2019
2018 yearly planning (three months to a page)
A month on two pages for each month starting with March
A year of one week on two pages, starting from w/c 26th March 2018
Daily pages starting from April 1st

There’s no notes chunky notes section at the back, but with a whole day to a page, I’m not entirely sure I’ll need any! The Spring edition only comes in Japanese, not English, so unfortunately the quotes at the bottom of each page is completely lost on me.

The planning pages

This has beautiful Tomoe River. It’s super thin but super durable. I’m heavy handed and so I’m going through a bit of an adjustment period at the moment trying not to handle the pages too roughly. I’m definitely too scared to attempt to use paperclips. Unlike with the Weeks, no bookmarks come with this. So in order to mark pages I’ve been using these Avery tabs.

All the pages excluding the initial years at a glance have a graph design to them. Each square is just under 0.3cm so while the paper lends itself to smaller handwriting I don’t think you need it to use the planner.

The month on two pages has a really nice, simple layout with extra space around it for anything else you want to make a note of for the month. I’ve been using the extra space on the left hand side to for to do’s for the month and I’ve also been tracking my running distance there. They’re also a Monday start which I love! I’ve missed a Monday start monthly view!

Again the weekly view has a really nice layout, with extra space on the side. I’m so used to a sidebar in the Happy Planner that I need one now. It’s perfect for habit trackers. Each day has an equal amount of space which is perfect for me considering my weekends are busier than my weekdays!

The daily pages are laid out in such a way that you can really use these pages for whatever you want. There is a a time bar down the left hand side and check boxes at the top but they’re easy to cover if you didn’t want them. Because they’re in the same colour as the graph squares they don’t stand out too much anyway.

Other pages

Like with the Weeks you get a few extra sheets at the back. A couple of notes pages, a timetable page, a top 100 page, gift list and a few others. As it’s in Japanese you can’t use all the pages, but some might be handy.

I’m thinking the time table page might be useful for writing my skincare routine as I do different things on different days.

How I’m going to be using it

So on the face of this, this Hobonichi could be a little OTT for planning. If I had a dentists appointment at 10:30am on Monday the 9th April I’d have four different places to write it in this. I’m therefore not going to be using the year planner or daily pages for actual life planning. These two sections are going to allow me to turn this into a bit of a bullet journal. I got the inspiration from a fantastic You Tuber called Yukiko Sakamura. The daily pages will largely be used for collections, notes and journaling. As they won’t necessarily have any relevance to the day I’m writing in I’ll be using the yearly calendar to write next to each day what is on that day’s pages.

In the example above I used the 1st April for some journaling as we had a lovely overnight stay in Manchester the night before. The 2nd was used for some Q2 goal planning.

Thoughts so far

I was so excited to start using this! And I absolutely love it. This has become my absolute go-to now. I’ve got all my planning in there including any notes and supplementary planning. A brain storm of sticker ideas? I use a daily page. My Q2 goals? A daily page. Having everything to hand and not having to go between my Leuchtturm and Happy Planner is perfect. I enjoy writing in this and love having it open on my desk.

My style of planning has changed and has been less about decoration and more about functionality. I’m doing less forward planning instead planning my week as I go but I don’t know if I’ll get more comfortable doing that the longer I use it. At the moment I still have a fear of ‘messing it up’.

I’ll give it another few weeks of use and get a cover for this and write an updated review, but I can’t see my thoughts changing, this is Planner Place!