I don’t focus a lot on diaries and planners on this site, mainly because I haven’t used a paper planner myself for many years. But every once in a while, I see something that I have to have. I spotted this pocket size Nolty planner at the Kinokuniya bookstore in NYC, amongst a few other sizes and formats from this brand. I was initially drawn to it by the size, which is just right for me– almost exactly the same as a pocket Moleskine, which is shown for comparison below. But upon looking at it more and more, I realized it actually has some very cool features, so I decided to buy one!
The cover is a thin flexible plastic, glued on– the edges have more overhang beyond the pages that I’d like but there is something very retro about it that I love. (See also the Pilot notebook in this post for a similar cover.) The year (’18) is embossed on the front and spine. The next thing I noticed was the black stained page edges– always a nice touch. There are two slim ribbon markers.
Inside the back cover there is a clear plastic flap where you can tuck a few cards or receipts. There’s also an additional plastic loop that holds in a separate booklet for addresses and telephone numbers– being able to move that info to the next year’s planner is very handy.
The binding is quite flexible, with stitched signatures that allow the notebook to open flat. The main layout inside has a Monday-Sunday week on the left, and an unlined page for notes on the right. The printing is in two colors, with red noting Sundays and Japanese holidays. You get a few weeks of 2017, and the weekly spreads end with week 1 of 2019. Across the top of each day, there are numbers for the waking hours of the day, 8am to midnight. Noon and 5pm are marked with red lines. The print is very small so it might not be right for anyone who needs reading glasses. But I really love this layout, especially since there are no lines or squares on the blank page, keeping it more free-form for art journaling.
At the beginning of the planner, there is a year-to-view spread, and some 2-months-per-spread pages. These seem like they’d work best with Japanese characters written vertically. At the end, there are some lined and squared notes pages, and a lot of backmatter which seems to include some measurement conversions and transit maps. It is all in Japanese, and looks gorgeous even if it’s not practical for someone like me who can’t read any of it!
The paper in the diary is thin and very smooth, in an ivory color. And here is what will really excite a lot of people: it is really good with fountain pens! No feathering, and you can see some nice ink shading. Drying time for the Lamy was between 15-20 seconds. The Pilot Metropolitan was dry in 10 seconds. Like other Japanese notebooks, the paper is thin enough that you can see through the page, but only the wettest pens bled through. There was a teensy bit of bleeding with the Carbon Pen, which surprised me since it’s so fine and not something that usually bleeds, but otherwise, even if it is not quite as good as the Hobonichi paper, I think is a very fountain pen friendly planner.
I took all these photos before I remembered that it would also be a good idea to test using a pencil and eraser, since planners tend to contain plans that change! I did try a mechanical pencil and eraser (both on a Uniball Style Fit)Â the paper seemed to hold up fine to erasing too.
All in all, I just love this diary! It has a lot of useful features and design touches that distinguish it from other notebooks. The paper is great. And it’s only $15.99 at Kinokuniya (which really seemed like a bargain after I saw that they were charging $43 for the Hobonichi Techo!) A comparable Moleskine planner with this layout costs $17.95. If you don’t have access to a Kinokuniya store, you might have trouble finding Nolty products– Kinokuniya’s website shows them as out of stock, and the only other online source in English I could find was Rakuten. They do seem to be listed at Amazon.jp. If anyone is aware of other sources for ordering Nolty planners, please leave a comment!