The Well-Appointed Desk

We have a plethora of Midori planners to share with you this week. Thanks to Vanness Pen Shop for sending these along to us to share with you. This is a combination preview and giveaway so read through for details about each planner. At the end will be information about how to enter to win one of these giveaway packages.

Giveaway #1: The 2019 Midori Pocket Cat Planner

This is a diminutive Midori Cat pocket planner ($9) includes the month-on-two-pages  and starts with October 2018. It’s a mere 3.25″x5″ (12.2×8.3cm) and includes tabs for each month (in Japanese but most people can probably suss out the first tab is January, the second is February, etc). The paper is bright white and the illustrations throughout are sweet, little cat sketches. There is a protetctive plastic cover over the cardstock paper cover to keep the booklet from getting damaged and provides a little pocket in the front and back cover for notes and ephemera. If you need something to stick in your pocket, purse or glovebox to keep track of  upcoming days, birthdays or just check on things, this would make a great little calendar. It would probably be a bit too small for everyday planning, however.

Giveaway #2: The 2019 Midori B6 Slim Seasons Planner

The Midori Slim Seasons Planner for 2019 ($11) is a larger than the pocket planner but is not as large as a standard  Traveler’s Notebook. The Seasons Planner measures 7″x3.75″ (17×9.5cm) providing a bit more space for the month-on-two-pages calendars. The paper is ivory and the illustrations are flowers, birds, leaves and kokeshi dolls. The Seasons planner has the same protective plastic cover over the flexible, cardstock cover. This is another good pocketable calendar. I don’t know that it is a full-blown planner but would make a nice addition to a larger hobonichi if you needed a monthly calendar to refer to occasionally for scheduling, family calendar planning or quick appointment noting (i.e. 3pm dentist appointment 6 months out that you can later transfer to a desk planner or a drinks date with a friend next Tuesday that you can make a digital reminder later, rather than fumble around trying to figure out how to set the reminder right then).

Giveaway #3: The 2019 Midori Ojisan B6 Datebook & Stickers

Midori makes some of the most ridiculously fun planner stickers ($3 per pack) so it made sense to pair the stickers with their silly 2019 B6 Ojisan Datebook ($22).

I conferred with a friend at work who is from Japan for more information about “ojisan”. Ojisan is the Japanese term for “middle aged man” or “uncle”. In the case of Midori’s planners, I think they are using it in the “middle aged man” sense in the way that we might make “dad joke” references, kind of weird things middle aged guys do sometimes. In the process of telling me the story, my friend also said there is a term for middle aged lady in Japan too. It’s obasan and she said the last time she was in Japan, a bunch of kids were yelling that at her. She said it took a minute for her to realize they were talking to her. “Wait… you’re calling me ‘old lady’? Hmpf?!” I found a web site that goes into a bit of the minutiae of when and how ojisan and obasan is used in Japan, if you’re curious.

Now, about the planner itself. The B6 size is approximately 7″x4.75″ (17.5x12cm) and features bright white paper (despite my rainy day photos suggesting otherwise!).  The months are indicated by die cut tabs and feature both month-on-two-page calendar pages and week-on-one-page plus notes for each week.

The month-on-two-pages start with October 2018 but the weekly pages don’t start until January 2019. There are a few notes pages in the back plus maps and address pages as well.

The tabs are laminated for durability and feature ojisan making the numbers of each month with his body.

This is a close-up of one of the illustrations of ojisan on the notes pages.

The B6 Ojisan Datebook includes a decorative protective plastic cover, a thin ribbon bookmark similar to the ones found in other Midori notebooks. The actual notebook is slid into the green vinyl, plastic cover. Without serious disassembly, I am going to assume the cover of the planner is blank or has minimal decoration, like other Midori notebooks.

Giveaway #4: The 2019 Midori Professional Planner A5 Slim

I would think the creators of the ubiquitous Traveler’s Notebook would have made the  2019 Midori A5 Slim Professional ($20) the same size as the Traveler’s Notebook A5 Slim… but no. It’s about 0.5″ (1.5cm) too wide to fit into a Traveler’s notebook cover. Not that everyone would want to put this into a leather cover but it sure would be nice. It’s essentially the same size as a Traveler’s Notebook cover so if you have a custom cover designed to be “wide” or “oversized”, this might fit inside it. That said, on its own, the polyvinyl cover over the cardstock is probably plenty durable, it’s just not as posh as I would associate with “professional”.

The Midori Professional goes back to the ivory paper. The monthly calendar is two-months-on-two-pages which does not offer a ton of space but is probably fine for marking vacations, holidays and project tracking. The whole planner actually starts the last week of November 2018. Along the margin is the week numbers.

The week-on-two-pages provides equal space for each day plus a space for notes. More than half of each block is tiny 2.5mm grid.

There are a good number of lined note pages, password keeper pages, to do sheets, project sheets, time zone maps, etc. in the back.

In Conclusion

So, while this is not all the Midori planners available for 2019 nor all the planners that Vanness is selling for 2019, this is a fairly wide selection showing the range of options available for pocketable to silly to appropriate for the most business-y of settings. I’m sure there will be one that meets your needs.

(As for pen tests, I found a video on YouTube done for some 2018 Midori planners. The video is over 45 minutes long but at the 23-minute mark she shows her pen tests for one of the planners proving the paper is relatively fountain pen-friendly.)

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TO ENTER: Leave a comment below and tell us which Midori Planner you most desire by Giveaway Number. No number in your entry and your entry will be disqualified, okay? One entry per person. We will pick a winner for each Giveaway lot.

If you have never entered a giveaway or commented on the site before, your comment must be manually approved by our highly-trained staff of monkeys before it will appear on the site. Our monkeys are underpaid and under-caffeinated so don’t stress if your comment does not appear right away. Give the moneys time.

FINE PRINT: All entries must be submitted by 10pm CST on Friday, Oct. 13, 2018. All entries must be submitted at wellappointeddesk.com, not Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook, okay? Winner will be announced on Saturday. Winners will be selected by random number generator from entries that played by the rules (see above). Please include your actual email address in the comment form (where it say “email address”) so that I can contact you if you win. I will not save email addresses or sell them to anyone — pinky swear. If winner does not respond within 7 days, I will draw a new giveaway winner. Shipping via USPS first class only. US and APO/AFO only, sorry.

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DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by Vanness Pen Shop for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.