Hello and welcome to best laid plans. This is your host, Sarah Hart Unger, and this is the podcast where we talk all things planning and planning adjacent.

Today's episode is going to be all about Hobonichi, which is something

I'm surprised I haven't devoted an entire episode to before. I know I've talked a lot about my

own planning systems with Hobonichi, but I always get questions about the upsides and downsides,

as well as where to buy. Now, I am freshly excited about Hobonichi after taking a little bit of a

hiatus from using their products. I think this is because they had a very successful kind of lead up

to their launch this year. They always do a month-long introduction to what their new covers and products are going to look like.

And at the beginning, this was at the beginning of August, I wasn't that excited.

But as they continue to release more, and then as this culminated in a hour-long Q&A,

where they walked through their store in Japan and actually showed all the

covers. I felt personally connected to the brand in a way that I haven't for a really,

really long time. And I'm just so excited to jump in and use their products again. I think there's

also a nostalgic element as we've all gone through what may amount to trauma or maybe less than that over the last

couple of years, you know, you find yourself craving the things that you loved in the past or

things that make you reminisce about maybe more simple times, perhaps. I don't know if it's that deep,

but I've just felt myself very, very drawn to their products again. And so I wanted to share a little bit about them as well as why you might want to check

them out this year as well if you haven't so far.

So first, I will go into a little bit of my personal history with the brand.

I bought my first Hobunichi Techo cousin, and I will review in detail what all of their

books are. But I bought it in 2014. Their spring edition. They actually have an edition that comes

out in January, like a typical 12-month planner. And because of some Japanese traditions,

there's also a spring edition that starts in April and ends at the end of

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