Hobonichi Original vs Cousin Size: A6 vs A5, Which to Pick

The difference

The hobonichi original vs cousin question, in two numbers

Most of the hobonichi original vs cousin question is answered by two numbers and one missing section. The Original is A6, 105 by 148 mm, 464 pages. The Cousin is A5, 148 by 210 mm, 544 pages. Run the multiplication and the Cousin page is 31,080 square millimetres against the Original’s 15,540, which is exactly double the writing area on every single day of the year.

The missing section is the weekly. The Cousin gives a week to a two-page spread with 24 hour timelines running from 5am to 4am. The Original has no weekly pages at all: it goes yearly, monthly, then straight to the day. That is a structural difference rather than a size one, and for a lot of people it decides the question before the page area gets a look in.

The memo count is the one line in that table that goes the other way, and it is worth understanding rather than treating as a defect. The Cousin spends its extra paper on the weekly spreads, so the loose pages at the back get thinner. If unstructured space is what you use a planner for, the smaller book gives you more of it.

The weekly

What the weekly spread is actually for

The weekly is the part of the Hobonichi Cousin that people either use every day or never open. A week across two pages with hour markers does something a daily page cannot: it shows you Thursday while you are standing in Monday. That sounds obvious and it changes how the book gets used. With a weekly, the daily page becomes a record of what happened. Without one, the daily page has to be both the plan and the record, and the planning half tends to migrate to a phone.

The 5am to 4am span is a small detail with a real consequence. A timeline that runs past midnight rather than stopping at it holds a late shift, a long flight or a night out in the day it belongs to. Anyone whose week does not end at 11pm will notice; anyone whose does will never think about it.

Read the other way, that is also the case for the Original. If you already plan in a calendar app and want paper for the writing rather than the scheduling, the weekly spread is 53 spreads of paper you will leave blank, and you are carrying them all year.

The bill

What it costs once the cover is in the basket

The quoted gap is ¥2,860 against ¥4,620, and it is not the gap you pay. Both books are sold bare and both need a cover, covers are cut to the size of the book, and A5 covers cost more than A6 ones across the range. Hobonichi’s cheapest A6 cover is ¥2,200 and the cheapest A5 is ¥2,860, so the honest entry price of each system is the pair.

That is ¥5,060 to start on the Original and ¥7,480 on the Cousin, before shipping and before anyone reaches for leather. Cover ranges run to ¥36,410 in A6 and ¥28,270 in A5, so the ceiling is wherever you decide to stop. The part worth remembering is that the cover is bought once and the book is bought every year, which makes the size decision more expensive to change than to make.

Both books have a full English edition, at the same prices as the Japanese ones, with English calendars and indices and without the Japanese holidays. That is not true of every cover design, since some collaborations stay Japanese only, but the books themselves are a straight swap. If any of this is new, our explainer on what a Hobonichi is covers the lineup and the cover system from the start.

Carrying it

The size question is a carrying question

Nobody abandons a planner because the page was too small. They abandon it because it was not there when the thing happened. A6 is 105 by 148 mm, which is a coat pocket, a small bag, and one hand. A5 is a sheet of paper folded once: it goes in a rucksack or it stays on the desk, and on most days it stays on the desk. If the sizing vocabulary is new, including the Slim cuts KOKUYO uses, our Japanese planner guide has the glossary.

Nobody abandons a planner because the page was too small. They abandon it because it was not there when the thing happened.On which size survives

So the useful test is not how much you write, it is where you write. If the entries happen at a desk, in a chair, at a known hour, the Cousin wins and the extra area is used. If they happen on a train, in a queue, in the ten minutes before something starts, the Original wins and the Cousin becomes a book you meant to bring. People who write a lot buy the Cousin and then carry the Weeks, which is the pattern that should tell you the two decisions are separate.

The third answer

Avec, for people who want the Cousin and cannot carry it

The Hobonichi Cousin Avec splits the same year into two books, January to June and July to December, each a little over half the thickness of the 544 page volume. Same page, same weekly, half the brick. It costs a second binding and gives back the main reason A5 owners leave the book at home.

The trade is that you carry six months of context instead of twelve, and you swap books mid-year, which is a small ceremony some people enjoy and others forget to do. It is the right answer for anyone whose objection to the Cousin is weight rather than size, and the wrong one for anyone who flips back to March in October.

If neither book fits after all this, the honest next step is out of the pair rather than deeper into it. Weeks and Day-Free solve the two complaints that neither the Original nor the Cousin can, and we put them beside the three genuine outside options in our guide to hobonichi alternatives. There is also a case for skipping paper, which our digital planner guide works through.

Verdict

Which one to buy

Most people arriving at hobonichi original vs cousin are buying their first one, and for a first Hobonichi the answer is the Original. It is ¥2,420 cheaper to get started with, it fits in the places where the entries actually occur, and if the daily page turns out to be too small you will know inside a month and have lost less. The upgrade path from Original to Cousin is a normal thing that happens; the downgrade path is people quietly buying a Weeks and leaving the A5 on a shelf.

FAQ

Common questions, answered briefly

If you have owned both, we would like to know which one you went back to and what changed in between. The switch stories are more useful than the unboxings, and they are much harder to find.

People also ask

Other questions, briefly answered