So I woke up feeling really inspired today and creative today. A big part of that inspired creativity was to get organized. I have several creative projects that I need to sort out and, for me, that means buying a new day planner. In the US, buying a new day planner is possible year-round. In Japan, apparently buying new day planner is reserved for November through March. I know this about Japan, but I have found one store that sells them year-round at a reasonable price. When I arrived at the store, to my horror, it was closed and would not re-open for another month. Undaunted, I went to my local AEON shopping mall, but they did not have any. I went to several stationery stores and they did not have any. Each place was gently telling me that it is the wrong time of year to buy a day planner with a calendar.

This made me feel like I was in the twilight zone. I am used to being able to buy a variety of calendars and planner products any time of the year. I went to 4 different stores and finally found a store that sold them for a whopping 200 USD. I was flabbergasted. This was way more than what I was intending to pay, so I passed. I did not get a new day planner. I did manage to get organized using a regular notepad, but the whole thing just left me feeing like “really, Japan?” It is times like this that I remind myself that culture shock can happen at any time. I have lived in Japan for 12 years and things like this still cause me culture shock. I know that Japan sells things seasonally, but for this one thing I had a workaround. When that workaround was not available, I couldn’t accept that this meant no day planner for me. As it turns out, I am much happier with the notebooks than I would have been with day planner, so today is still a good day to live in Japan.