Every so often, I spot interesting looking Japanese notebooks and planners on Instagram. Without knowing any Japanese, it’s sometimes hard to figure out what the brand is, but sometimes I manage to click around in various hashtags and find at least a keyword or two that might lead to a link I can copy and paste into Google to try to find more information. My latest such search didn’t enable me to buy the diary I was curious about, or even discover its brand name, but it did lead me to some other Japanese products that I found interesting.

I guess it’s not unusual to find notebooks that have a theme relating to a hobby– Moleskine’s “Passion” notebooks, and Smythson’s themed “lifestyle” notebooks, for instance. But I don’t remember ever seeing a yearly dated diary with a fishing theme, like this one.

According to the original poster (via Google translate), “as it has sections specifically designed for fishing, allowing me to record detailed information about my catch, conditions, time, tackle, and so on.” Even better:

“The fishing section includes information about daily fishing, river conditions, fish condition, personal condition, training, research, etc.

In addition, the calendar section records global weather conditions, sea water temperature, rainfall, air temperature, local river conditions, environmental changes, and so on, day by day, without fail.”

Alas, it was discontinued after the 2021 edition, leaving the original poster searching for some other notebook in which to record his 245 days per year (!) of fishing!

I also found a Japanese diary designed specially for bookstore employees and publishers.

This was quite exciting to me, as I work in the publishing industry myself and I’ve never heard of anything like this diary. The contents include:

　Sales support information, annual sales plan table, list of qualification exams and certifications, list of major magazine release dates, how to use sales indexes, basic knowledge of textbook revisions, etc.

　・Various store checklists
　　Store checklists, competitor store survey charts, daily checklists for disaster preparedness

　・Book classification
　　C code table, book 36 classification code table, Nippan magazine classification display

　・Awards and information:
　　List of Akutagawa Prize winners, List of Naoki Prize winners, book and magazine formats, list of publishers, etc.

It would be great to have something like this for the book industry in the US, though our data and checklists might be a bit different. Books in the US are classified by codes called BISAC and the full list would be way too mind-numbingly long to print in a notebook!

I love the idea of specialized notebooks that will help you keep track of a hobby or job, but I’ve never had the occasion to use one. Have you, dear readers?