daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
Three months into my Hobonichi Techo A6 and still really enjoying it. 📓
Writing small has been a challenge, but I’ve slowed down and started paying more attention to how I form my letters. It’s a different kind of writing than my morning pages, which stay big and loose since that’s all about getting thoughts down fast.
The slow, deliberate approach has been a nice surprise. Turns out I like it a lot.
I finally settled into a journaling layout that feels right. 📓 The left side tracks the day’s timeline, the right side gets a few short notes. Top left is for the day’s high and low temps, and top right has a checklist for tracking my language learning.
I keep tweaking things here and there, adding icons with a stencil or pasting in little bits of ephemera. I’m having a lot of fun with it!
We spent the day shopping in Umeda, Osaka, and it was a really good time. 🛍️
First stop was the Nintendo Store. We were in there for a while, just soaking it all in. I’m a big Splatoon fan, so I picked up a keychain and a notebook. I had my eye on a mini skateboard too, but no luck on that front.
From there we headed to Loft, where I found exactly what I was looking for: the Tomie A6 Hobonichi cover! Just the cover by itself, which was perfect since I can swap it right onto my current setup. Yatta! I also grabbed a Tomie Weeks (March start), which is super cool. I’ll use it for Japanese vocabulary notes. I still need a pencil board and an A5 cover to complete my Tomie Hobonichi collection, so the hunt continues. 👀
The last stop was Tsutaya Books, and wow, what a place. The layout is circular, so you just browse in one direction and loop back to where you started. They had an amazing wall of fancy fountain pens, a solid selection of more affordable pens, and even a camera section where I checked out the latest Fujifilm and Sony gear. Highly recommend if you ever find yourself in Umeda.
I picked up a pair of tiny tweezers that are specifically designed for applying stickers. And I have to admit, they work! Placement is so much easier and way more accurate. No more peeling, re-peeling, and trying to nudge a sticker one millimeter to the left.
Of course, none of that stopped me from carefully, meticulously, and confidently placing the sticker on my earbuds case completely upside-down. 🤦🏻♂️ Doh!
As I get ready to start my very first Hobonichi Techo, I asked Mariko if she happened to have any stamps I could borrow. I was hoping to find an airplane stamp to use next to my travel plans. She casually told me she had a bunch of stamps, plus washi tape, highlighters, and a whole pile of other journaling goodies. Wow, she was not kidding. I hit the stationery jackpot!
Today my 2026 Hobonichi Techo finally arrived, and I am ridiculously excited about it. This is my very first Hobonichi, and I already have big ideas for how I want to use it. Of course, I have no idea how those plans will actually shake out, but that is part of the fun. I am really looking forward to discovering my own rhythm with it.
My goal is to use it more as a journal than a forward-looking planner. I want it to become a record of my days, a place for memories, thoughts, and little notes rather than just a list of future tasks.
To go along with it, I also picked up a Pilot Frixion pen with erasable ink. I have a feeling that is going to be a lifesaver while I am still figuring out how I like to use the Hobonichi. Now I just have to wait for 2026 to arrive. I cannot wait to begin.
I finally filled up my little A6-sized Muji notebook that I bought years ago! I’d just finished another one I’d been using for my morning pages, so I grabbed the Muji next – turns out it only had a few pages left. A couple of days later, done! That makes two notebooks finished (and out of my life) in one week. I still have a few more blank ones waiting for their turn, but I’m definitely making progress on my notebook decluttering mission!
