Mid-August has turned into a time of electronic experimentation. Just as this stretch of the month used to be spent taking important decisions about how to fill the pencil case and rucksack for the school year ahead (Bic or Staedtler pens for note-taking? Ring binder with loose-leaf inserts or simple A4 notebooks? Graph paper or regular lined pages? Metal or wooden ruler? Glue in stick form or a tube?) at my favourite stationery store, it’s now turned into an agonising period of reckoning about what devices need replacing and which simply need to go. This isn’t to say that the whole focus is purely digital either. As you’re settling into yet another section of this newspaper I’ll be bound for Tokyo for a week of work and also my annual stationery stock-up.

From Sunday this will involve a trip to Delfonics at Omotesando Hills for linen-covered notebooks and the company’s new plastic-covered Hermès-esque series of jotters. Later on I’ll pop down to Ginza for a full two hours covering the floors at Itoya, and before heading back to the hotel (this trip the Peninsula), I’ll swing by the new, super-edited branch of Tokyu Hands across from Tokyo Station.