The year is ending, so a new Hobonichi begins - Hobonichi Cousin Planner Review

The title couldn't be more obvious, and for those who are not in the know, bullet journaling has been one of the main target for the Japanese stationery industry and it's for good reasons - most of the japanese I know have this tendency to write things down before doing something, and that translates to the needs for a more systematic planner in their lives, and that's where Hobonichi comes in.

Started in 2002, the brand has been a staple among bujo fans because of their easy to use planner designs and even the fountain pen community as their main source of paper comes from the notorious Tomoe River. I have been using their 5-year Diary for a while now and I must say, having such as nice notebook for a whole 5 years gives you this pressure of not wanting to write too much mundane and unimportant things in it, but what if we scale that down to a Cousin - their take on the yearly/monthly/weekly scheduler, with some of their accessories?

The starter combo looks pretty simple to say the least: a stringbound notebook with hardcover, comes with a Uni Jet Stream multicolor ballpoint branded with Hobonichi, and a sample of next year paper since they are still going through the whole ordeal with Tomoe River. The details of that were covered extensively by Tokyo Inklings podcast so I’ll let them do the story telling, but for now let’s focus on the Cousin planner at hand.

Packaging is pretty straightforward with this one, in a good way - less plastic waste, and it saves a lot on cost compare to their other more luxurious 5-year Techo line. I do prefer this style of presentation as the longer I stay in the fountain pen hobby, the mountain of boxes and paper in my house keeps growing larger and larger.

I’ll come back to the content of the planner in a bit, as the accesories is a whole other rabbit hole to get into. You also get a pull bag with this one, with the distinctive Hobonichi 2023 printed on the side. It looks pretty sturdy and would add to that whole #hobonichi vibe.

The cover feature in this review is bought separately, and it does have some cool features inside - plenty of card slots and 2 string bookmarks at your disposal. The pen loop also works on bigger pens such as the 149 but I doubt our fountain pen geeks would hang our precious instruments loosely on the side as designed by Hobonichi.

Back to the main character, the Cousin comes with quite a number of lists and layout for your choosing, and first time users might feel overwhelmed by the number of pages and the way around the book.

First, why wouldn’t anyone need more than 1 year of calendar? Well you get 3 with this one, 2022-2023-2024 laid out side by side.

The next 26 pages are your “daily-must-do” list of the month I presume, as each day has a box for your note taking or exam dates if you’re still in school. Some might use these boxes right from the get go to note down anniversaries or holiday trips etc.

There are pages for you to start right from Dec 2022 up to Dec 2023, so feel free to start experimenting with what you like right away.

The next set of pages give you more room to note down, and each column represents a day in the week. I do like this section the most as you have a clear weekly schedule look, and more room means more decorations and color coding if you’re into that.

Skipping through a few blank grid pages, we have 365 pages for your creative journey, but only 1 page per day though. The date and day are noted on the top corner, plus a smaller monthly calendar on the bottom, and a lovely quote to inspire your writing or doodling.

and each month is color coded as well for your ease of use

and after all that, we get a few more blank pages, and then some other miscellaneous pages at the end.

Overall, the Cousin is an over engineered planner and I love it for that. It got pretty much everything you need but not too overbearingly strict on how you should be using it, giving us enough freedom to customize but also not leaving us with not a single thing to rely on. I do not have a writing sample on this one as it’s going to a new home but I’d surely be adding one when my 5-year runs out of pages :)