Japanese Jabba the Hutt Stationery Items (With Bonus Star Wars Japanese-English Dictionaries!)

Japan makes some of the best stationery items on the planet. I wrote about a series of Star Wars-themed notebooks a while back, but while I was in Japan last month I took the time to find out what else was available. I found a number of these in stores like Toys R Us, but had to order the ones explicitly featuring Jabba from Amazon Japan. There were a number of different character designs available for most of these, but of course I chose the Jabba-related ones.

First we have a folder and small spiral-bound notebook from Sun-Star Stationery featuring the droids and a scene from Jabba’s Palace. The notebook feels extremely high quality, with very thick and sturdy cardboard used for the covers. It’s lined inside, with a spot for the date separated by rebel and imperial symbols at the top.

The folder is made of very thin but high-quality plastic, with a mirrored finish on the inside. It’s a cool look.

I also picked up folders featuring Jabba the Hutt and Boba Fett, also from Sun-Star. These aren’t quite as nice as the one above, since they feature simple artwork and no mirror finish on the inside, but they’re still cool.

I’m not a huge fan of the artwork that they chose for Jabba. While details of the face seem based more on the Return of the Jedi version, the pose is obviously based on the CGI design from Episode One, where Jabba is biting the head off of a chuba. For whatever reason they’ve removed it and just have Jabba holding his empty hand up to his mouth. A little odd. They also used this artwork for two other items: a memo pad and a notebook.

The notebook is a somewhat plain affair with a manilla cover and “STAR WARS” branding on the inside.

The memo pad is a bit more interesting. It has a clear plastic cover with the Jabba design on it, and white paper underneath.

More interesting still is the design inside.

You get four unique designs. I think the art design on these is a little questionable — they look kind of traced. But still, it’s very cool to get something like this. They made a whole set of these for various characters.

Next up are these spiral notebooks with 3D character covers. These don’t feel quite as high in quality as the previous notebook, and the plastic covers seem a little on the flimsy side.

However, they do have one interesting feature inside, and that’s what made me buy them. Each design has a different set of characters with speech bubbles, allowing you to write messages as if they’re being spoken. It’s a neat idea.

Finally, there’s this pixel art style notebook from Runa. The cover features pixelated versions of all kinds of Star Wars characters, including Jabba and the Rancor.

Inside, it’s graph paper, which initially surprised me, but it actually makes a lot of sense given the theme. It would even allow you to design your own pixelated characters. There are characters printed on the corners of each page, although just the ones shown here.

BONUS! Star Wars-Branded Japanese-English/English-Japanese Dictionaries by Gakken!

These aren’t really related to Jabba, but when I stumbled upon them in a bookstore, I just had to buy them. As I’ve mentioned before, I am a Japanese translator, so I use dictionaries every day. Nowadays I only use computerized dictionaries, since you can just copy and paste the word you want to look up, and then search dozens of dictionaries simultaneously. So the truth is that I would never actually use these. But I did use dictionaries like this back when I was still a student, and indeed these are intended for students in junior high or high school. In any case, I just couldn’t resist picking up something that combined my interests so perfectly. Like most dictionaries in Japan, these come with cardboard sleeves.

When removed, you can see that each dictionary has a unique design depending on the character you chose — Darth Vader or Stormtrooper. (As far as I can tell these are the only designs available — no Jabba, alas!) The covers are made of a nice feeling embossed plastic. The contents of the two versions are identical, and for the most part they’re just standard dictionaries, but do have one unique feature: a section called “Lord Vader’s English Phrases.”

It gives a few typical phrases that Vader uses in the film and explains them. It’s not terribly useful (especially for an English speaker) but still it’s nice that they tried to add a little unique content.