Happy Wednesday! Check-in time!
My birthday was Friday and I caught the vicious cold my partner had earlier that week. Birthday plans were canceled and it was pretty much four days of DayQuil comas and playing Love and Deepspace in bed. In fairness, our plans were already pretty lowkey and they’ve been rescheduled for this weekend.
Also, like many of you, my birthday gave me a chance to reflect on how long I’ve been part of this community. I started reading SBTB in high school, become a staff member in my mid-twenties, and now I’m in my mid-thirties. Time flies and it’s been a delight to be here with y’all!
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To all my stationery aficionados, the Best of Japan’s Stationery Awards 2025 have been announced. I so badly want to be a planner/stationery girlie, but that’s sadly not how I’m wired.
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If you want to design your travel plans around which hotels have a cat ambassador, here’s a lovely list.
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Kelly Faircloth is in National Geographic again (we love to see it!) to discuss the evolution of dragons from menace to BFFs.
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Why won’t someone thing of the cold cover models!
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Don’t forget to share what cool or interesting things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
Happy birthday, Amanda. Hope you are feeling better.
I thoroughly enjoy your contributions to this fabulous website.
Belated birthday (and good health) wishes to you, Amanda!
One year I was sick on my birthday. When I told a friend that there ought to be a law against getting sick on one’s birthday, she said there was one, I had just broken it. Hope you feel better soon and have a chance to celebrate when well.
The link to the stationery awards reminded me of one of my favorite places in Tokyo: Itoya. It’s a multistory building full of stationery, pens, cards, folders, gift wrap – everything paper and related to paper. Definitely my happy place.
Happy birthday! Birthdays should be celebrated for at least a week anyway.
Happy birthday! I had covid on my last birthday, given to me by my twin sister (who was by then recovered).
I am not a planner person but I adore stationery.
Happy belated birthday!
Happy Birthday! (I also played Love and Deepspace on my birthday), as my midlife crisis awakened a previously unknown passion for Otome games.
Happy Birthday!
Loved the shirtless men link. lol
I’m a happy JetPens customer (I usually go for the Snoopy-themed Uni Jetstream pens from Japan, which are darling and make my crummy penmanship look almost neat) and yet didn’t know about the awards, sheesh! Their Youtube video guides are both useful and entertaining (even if they don’t have the blooper reels much anymore)…
Ack, how dopey of me to have missed your birthday, Amanda—I’m sorry! Birthday Observed is definitely a thing, and I like to stretch out mine for a good month, so I hope you do, too! (Happy happy, by the way…)