Hobonichi 5 Year Techo A5 Review

 

 [VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]

 

Hello my friends, I hope you're doing well. In this video, I will be doing a review of the Hobonichi 5 Year Techo and I'm going to give you some things to consider. If you're thinking about buying this journal, I'm going to talk about things I like about the journal and things I dislike about the journal.

 

If you're new here, hello, my name is Tonya and I make videos on practical and functional planning. If that's something that sounds interesting to you, I would love it if you would subscribe to this channel where I give lots of tips and tricks on planning.

 

If you happen to own this journal, please let people know what you think about the five-year Techo in the comments.

 

Now if you like what you see in this video and you're in America and you're trying to get your hands on this five-year Techo, I will leave a Amazon Japan link below where you can purchase this and it even converts the currency for you, so you'll know exactly what you're paying to get the journal delivered to your address.

 

If you're not familiar with Hobonichi, Hobonichi is a Japanese planter brand and I am American so I am going to review this journal from an American point of view. I don't speak Japanese but I decided to buy this journal because I fell in love with the concept of it. It is A5-year journal. So, what that means is you can record events that happened in your life up to five years and have the ability to compare where you are in life over the five years. I'm going to show you how the planner pages look in a moment.

 

First let me show you the cover. It has a vinylish look and the cover here is like a burgundy or undertones of black and the cover is flexible. This is a A5 and it also comes in smaller sizes. So, A5 size is equivalent to the classic size that we call here in America. So, it's about eight and a half inches tall and about a little over six inches wide. The book is quite thick because it contains five years' worth of pages. Now the one I have I purchased this last year and the five-year span that it covers is 2021 through 2025.

 

So, if you know anything about Hobonichi, if you're thinking about purchasing this Hobonichi  products typically sell out by the time they get to the end of the year; that just shows you how popular the brand is.

 

I decided to buy this in December last year. And by the time I went on the Hobonichi  website, they were already sold out. So, I ended up actually purchasing this from eBay. I had to wait a long time for it and I actually had to pay quite a bit in shipping to get it shipped to me here in America.

 

So, this journal just so you know, comes in a cardboard box and it'll have the five years on the front here. It also comes with this pamphlet that's also in Japanese. This is A5 size and if you didn't know my shop at Tonyaplans.com sells ringless covers. So, if you have A5 planner or A5 journal or A5 notebook and you need a cover for it, you can go to my website. This is a black cover that I sell, and you can save money with discount promo code TONYAPLANS10.  But it looks very professional. And inside of the snap cover, it has lots of organization. There's a pocket that goes this way. You can stick journals and receipts and things in the cover. This way as well there is a gusset zipper pocket here that expands out. You have a slot here for papers and you have several card slot holders and a transparent card spot holder on the back. You can even put a notepad here and use this as a cover that you take to meetings and there are additional pockets right here that come with two elasticized pen loops. So, I put my five year A5 Hobonichi  journal here.

 

Now when you feel across the cover, these letters are gold, and they're deeply involved. And this means Hobonichi Five Year Techo up because it has the years across the spine. When you open the cover, here it is blank, you'll have a page here with the annual calendars for each year that your touch Oh covers. You can see across here, there's some Japanese writing for each of the months. But in general, it should be usable for anyone because numbers are pretty much universal.

 

The paper is the Tomoe River Paper, which is a very thin paper. It is well known for being able to handle fountain pens, watercolors and stuff like that, and not bleed through. Now it may not bleed through but you will see ghosting because this is a thin paper.

 

I fell in love with the concept of this journal. And I'm going to tell you what I ended up thinking later. Now that I've owned this journal for over a year, I think that I'm in a good position to really tell you about the pros and cons of it and the advantages and disadvantages of it as I see it.

 

So, this will be January 2nd, and you get to write an entry for each day when you're in this year, then you will come back and every day the idea is you write in a journal every day. And then the next year you can write in your entries for the following year. 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.

 

Now I love that you'll be able to look back over five years and look over how my life was and see at what stage I was at and where my mind was at.

 

I decided to get to A5 size because I wanted more room to write this journal also comes in the smaller sizes. So, you can get that too if you don't need as much room to write.

 

And then over here is a blank page. So, if you don't have enough room to write and you need to spill over, you can use this page for that you can use this page for almost anything that you want. But there's a blank page here.

 

Probably because I don't speak Japanese, I didn't like how much space is being taken up by these quotes or sayings that they put at the bottom of the page. I wish that they would just continue with the grid here. But that's my personal opinion. So, when you look at the space that these take up, this takes up over an inch of space. So that's additional writing space that I could have had.

 

I'm kind of at the point in my life I used to love when planners and journals included quotes, I was like, “Oh, wow, that's a plus, it'll be some inspiration”. I've been planning for a long time. And I find that I tend to ignore the quotes when I'm going on about my day-to-day activities, I just don't take the time to read them. Now some people may do that. You may be a person that says, “Oh, I've read the quote every day on my planner pages”. I tend to not read it. And actually, I prefer writing in my own inspirational quote, or religious saying or religious Bible verse or something. Some people are religious, some people aren't. But it means more to me, when I actually write down the quote; it seems like I absorb it more. And the quote I know is applicable to me because I wrote it.

 

So each page is like that each page has an entry where you can write in what you did for the deck. So for the year I got it, which was last year and 2021, I didn't own the journal at this beginning part of the year and that's why it was blank. Every night. The idea was to come out here and just write something about my day.

 

So here was the disadvantage of this for me, and it's the reason why it did not work for me. Yes, I'm telling you, I bought this journal, and I stopped using it. And I'm going to tell you the reason why I already have a regular planner. And in my planner, I write down things about my day. I write down to do lists, I write down what I need to do for the kids, I sometimes write down how I'm feeling. I'm writing down all types of things in my regular planner.

 

So, at the end of the day, when I'm sitting up in bed, and I have reached my five-year Techo and I'm ready to write in it, I felt like I was writing a repeat of the things that I already had in my planner. And I could just simply feel like wow, this is just double work. So, what are the things that were going on that day my planner already has, where I went and what I did and the meetings that I was in. So, I felt like I was repeating myself here, I felt like I was just taking all those things in my planner and writing a summary here. And it just felt repetitive. It was the same thing. And then I finally say, “Well, you know what, if I archive my planner pages, I will have everything there”.

 

Now surely, I can't sit and compare what I did year to year over and over again. It just felt repetitive to me. And it was too hard to keep up with my busy lifestyle. But I am in love with the concept. Should you buy this, it is an excellent journal. I love how the sliding is sewn. And this lies flat. Look how flat that lies. I don't like the journals where you're writing and it is trying to close on your hand, I do recommend it. And just so you know, the pages are like an off-white color, almost like a creamy color. I did write in it for a while here as you can see. I'm not going to actually show you all of these because I have personal thoughts. And a lot of times I write about people in my family, and they may not appreciate me showing the things I write about them. Should you get it and few like this concept of being able to record what you do from day to day, I think it's a great heirloom to leave to your family, you do get one skinny ribbon here to help keep your place but as you can see, over time, the ribbon actually frayed and it's a brownish color.

 

So, when you flip through, it's just like this all over. And as you can see, here's an example of ghosting, I wrote on the other side and you can see on the side of the page, like I said, I don't mind because once you write your writing up there, you won't even see the ghosting on the other side I did buy one of these this is called a pencil board. If you write hard, you can see the end dents on future planner pages. I don't write that heavy that will help keep the planner pages straight while I am writing on them.

 

Also, a nice thing about this pencil board is that there's a little tab here. So, if you want to use this to keep your day instead of the ribbon, you can just quickly find your page by grabbing onto this tab and turn into the appropriate page.

 

So, the Hobonichi Techo is like this the entire way through and when you get to the end of the journal, this is December 31. You will see you have a blank page here and then for each year you have an opportunity to write a one-page overview of how your year went. And this word here says bookmark so this is a whole page for each year. Over here is a page called, “Remember This” and you have a section for gifts. So, when you give gifts or you receive gifts, I think this is a great idea as well to actually log it.

 

Here we are in a world where we consume and get so much stuff. It is nice to take a moment to sit down and write about what you give and receive, because then you can come back here and reflect. And then here is a page where you can write in addresses for up to 16 people. But this is my list. And here you can write whatever you want. I chose to write a list of books that I was reading. And here is a list of movies that I have watched. As you can see, I watched “The Salt and Pepper” movie. I thought that was interesting. You know, the 90s were my time, that was when I was in my heyday in the 90s. And here is a page translated this one time, I think these were just like interesting things that happened on certain dates. And of course, you can always use the Google Translate app if you want to read more about that. On the last page is a page where you write in your personal information like who this book belongs to.

 

So that is my overview of the planner. It is something that I thought I would love and be able to keep up with. I just couldn't do it with my schedule, but that doesn't mean that this wouldn't work for you. If you have any questions about this, please let me know in the comments. I'll be glad to tell you my point of view on it. Please don't forget to like this video. This is Tonya helping you feel more organized so this would be your best year yet.