MIDORI 5 Year Diary Gate Mini - Light Green and Red / MIDORI

Five-year diaries work on a different rhythm from a planner. Instead of a fresh page every day, each page carries five short entries, one per year, so that on any given date you can read what you wrote in the same spot four years earlier. The Gate Mini is the pocket version of that idea: small enough to keep beside a bed or in a drawer, with two ruled lines per day rather than a full page.

What is inside

The book is dated by month and day, not by year, so a page for a given date serves all five years of use. Each day gets two lines, which is enough for a sentence about the weather, a mood, a small event or a number worth tracking. Because the lines are short, the format suits people who stop writing in blank journals and want a fixed, finishable amount of writing per day.

Size and finish

The body measures H154 x W117 x D24 mm and the matching slip case measures H158 x W121 x D28 mm. The cover carries a gold-stamped gate motif, with the year range and the brand line printed beneath it. Two ribbon markers let you keep one place on today's date and another on a date you want to revisit.

• Light green (12715006): pale green cloth-look cover with gold stamping
• Red (12716006): deep red-orange cover with the same gold gate motif

How people use it

Common patterns are a one-line daily record, a temperature and garden log, a child's growth diary, or a place to note a single sentence of what happened. Because entries for five years share a page, the book also doubles as a comparison: you can see at a glance whether this winter was colder, or how a habit has changed since you started.

What to know before you buy

• The diary is dated by month and day only. If you start in the middle of the year, the earlier dates stay blank rather than being wasted pages.
• Two lines per day is a deliberate limit. This is not a book for long entries or pasted-in ephemera.
• The paper is thin enough to keep the book pocketable, so heavy fountain-pen ink may show through. Pencil, ballpoint and gel pens are the safer choice.
• The slip case protects the cover in a drawer but is not a travel case.

Pair it with

This diary lives in the MIDORI collection with the rest of the range, next to planners and daily diaries and our journaling supplies. The three-year version is the 3 Year Diary Gate Mini, and if you would rather plan weeks than record days, the Pocket Diary 2027 uses the same small book format.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How does a five-year diary work?

A: Each page is assigned to one date, and that page carries five short entry spaces, one for each year. You write on the current date in the row for the current year and leave the others for later years, so after a few years a single page holds the same day five times.

Q: How much can you write per day?

A: Two ruled lines per day. That is roughly a sentence: the weather, one thing that happened, or a short note you want to compare next year. The limit is deliberate, since a five-year diary only works if the daily habit stays small.

Q: What size is the Gate Mini?

A: The body is H154 x W117 x D24 mm and the slip case is H158 x W121 x D28 mm. It is close to A6 in footprint but thicker, because the same page has to hold five years of entries.

Q: Is it dated for specific years?

A: No. The pages are dated by month and day only, with the year written in by you. That is why the book can start at any point and why unused years simply stay blank until you reach them.

Q: What is the difference between the three-year and five-year versions?

A: The format is the same two-lines-per-day layout and the same small book size. The three-year version gives each date three entry rows and is thinner, while the five-year version stacks five rows on the same page and is noticeably thicker in the hand.

Q: Will fountain pen ink bleed through the paper?

A: The paper is kept thin so the book stays pocketable, which means a wet fountain pen can show through to the other side. Pencil, ballpoint and fine gel pens write cleanly and dry fast, and those are the tools MIDORI designs this diary around.