i bought one and it shipped out to me about two weeks ago as well. it’s really nice and the paper seems like it will be able to stand up to things like water colors… but for that, the book is remarkably slender. i’ve looked at other notebooks and you’ll be hard pressed to find anything that can squeeze in 200+ pages in a form factor so compact.
caveats:
the leather cover that they’re pushing for the western markets looks nice but it’s ridiculously expensive… i believe it was around $200! so no thanks. the planner itself is $25 (conversion to dollars - basically lob the last two digits off the number in yen). i got a black nylon cover (the nylon covered ones are featured in the video above and they’re sold under “japanese covers” and it was only $17! i love the pen loops that serve as a “lock” when a pen is pushed through both.
so the prices so far $25 + $17 not bad at all. but the killer is shipping. no free amazon style shipping. it’s another $20 to ship to the states. GAH! not cool. really wish they had an american distributor.
as a planner, it doesn’t make a huge amount of sense in this digital world. i plan to use it as a notebook/journal. the 1 day per page will end up being disregarded as i write more or less per day, according to whim.
as for why paper journals?
- faster. srsly, grabbing your pen and scribbling something down is much faster than pecking something out with a soft keyboard. heck, it’s probably faster than getting your note taking app to launch. also, later when you want to look back at previous entries, nothing is quite as fast as the random access of flipping pages. the ease and openness of having your thoughts on pages really opens you up to looking through it and not dreading the slowness of opening up a previous document. i really wanted to like taking notes on my iOS and android devices and i’ve tried a variety of apps that were custom built to provide this kind of experience… and i still do take notes digitally using dropbox as a universal repository whether i’m on pc, iphone or android tablet. but yeah, not as fast and friendly as paper and pen… and heck… not has fast and friendly as my handspring(palm pilot compatible) with graffiti 1… (dang i miss that tech!).
so it might strike some as “hipster” and that’s fine. but there’s real functionality to be had here. it’s not just for the retro chic set.
