The Hobonichi Techo Weeks MEGA looks like an excellent planner plus notebook choice for 2024. The front part of the planner contains the popular two page per week layout for the full year, and the back part contains 200+ pages of classic Hobonichi graph paper. This is a great format and layout, so if you are interested in winning this Aqua Blue model read the rules below and enter away!
Posts filed under Hobonichi
Hobonichi Paper(s) Aurora Duty Notebook Review
(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)
Hobonichi's planner success is legendary, but their accessory offerings seem to grow more fun and varied every year. This is the first time I've tried their Paper(s) Notebook, and it's a great addition to the Hobonichi lineup, though it may not be as popular with the fountain pen side of their audience.
The Paper(s)s notebook is the same A6 size as a Hobonichi Techo. While it has the same tape-sealed spine, the binding in this book is a glue that allows you to remove the pages. Every page separates cleanly and easily, which is perfect for sharing notes and info, or for disposable writing like shopping lists. While a Hobonichi planner feels like a keepsake, almost a bit of memoir, this Paper(s) book is clearly a consumable. There's no pressure of preservation or perfection. In fact, I even messed up my first writing sample, so I threw it away and tore out a new sheet.
This notebook does fit inside any Techo cover, though I would imagine it would fit less well as the pages inevitably deplete. And I wouldn't want to cover up those adorable bears, anyway.
The design, by Hiroko Kubota, shows an adorable bear guiding an aurora across the sky. On the back there's another wee bear pulling a sled with his coffee pot and steaming mug while he watches the sky. Each page inside has a third illustration of the bears enjoying the coffee together. It's ADORABLE. I can't stop saying it.
The pages themselves are where I think Hobonichi divides their audience a bit. If you're just using this paper to make throw-away notes with a standard ballpoint or pencil, great! You're good! But the paper in this notebook is not the Tomoe River paper that is found in Hobonichi planners and other notebooks. It's a fully uncoated wood-free paper, so any liquid ink goes straight through. If it's a very liquidy ink in a broad nib pen, it will actually bleed through onto the next page. While the back of the page isn't as important for notepaper, where it's unlikely you intend to use both sides of the sheet, getting ink onto the pages behind is not ideal. So, there is no amount of fountain pen friendliness here. Which is okay, because that's not what it's meant for, but I think the Hobonichi name does carry the expectation of excellent paper--and this isn't that. It's functional, disposable paper--and we all need some of that, too.
In keeping with the purpose of "use this up and throw it away" this notebook is priced very fairly at only $8 at JetPens. For 155 sheets patterned with adorable bears, that's a great price, and it's an easy add-on when you're selecting your array of other Hobonichi accessories. Mine has already seen a lot of use, as the loose pages are endlessly necessary for lists and notes I can hand off to family members. And yes, I'm still using it with fountain pens, letting the ink bleed and feather as it will, like the chaos gremlin that I am.
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.
Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!
Hobonichi Plain A6 Notebook Review
(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)
The fabulous Tomoe River paper and Hobonichi construction in a plain notebook--it's exactly the product I wished for back when I used to use outdated Hobonichi Techo planners as blank books for writing just because I loved the paper and binding so much.
This A6 notebook has a yellow-gold cardstock cover with a thread-and-glue taped binding that allows the book to lie open flat with almost no training required. This binding is flexible but sturdy--it's going to survive you carrying it around for as long as it takes you to fill all of those 240 pages.
Speaking of 240 pages, we're talking 120 sheets of Tomoe River goodness. It tolerates any medium, even the wettest of fountain pen inks, light paint washes, even the Sharpie didn't bleed through all the way. It is very lightweight, though. If you're unfamiliar with the miracle of Tomoe River, it's onionskin-thin, so while it doesn't bleed, you will see a lot of ghosting. Even light pencil is visible through the page. I love the way it looks, but it does bother some, so YMMV. Even if you can't stand ghosting and can only use one side of the page--that's still 120 pages! And because the paper is so fine, the notebook is slim and ultra-portable. It's only .3" thick, making the whole notebook just slightly larger than a pocket size.
And a portability bonus--this notebook (even two of these notebooks) fit into the Hobonichi Techo covers. If, uh, you maybe, might have, possibly accumulated a few gorgeous techo covers over the years because they release so many lovely ones every year and you just can't help it (ahem), one or a few of these would feel right at home in one of those out-of-rotation covers.
The paper is white with a small 3.7 mm grid pattern that covers the whole sheet. The graph print is subtle, and every 60 pages the ink color changes, from red to blue to green, then purple. You can easily ignore the color changes, or use them as a guide to design your own planner or multi-subject notebook.
This is a small powerhouse of a notebook. It's also available in an A5 size, and this year you can even get it in A6 or A5 with a gorgeous floral illustrated cover. And fortunately, they're reasonably priced, with this plain A6 version costing $17 at Jetpens. The A5 is slightly more at $22, and the floral editions are a bit more than that.
I could write in these forever. If someone said "these are the only notebooks you're allowed to use for the rest of your life" I would be pretty okay with that. As long as I could keep accumulating the pretty covers, of course.
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.
Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!
