• The Week #270

    by
    • 🕹️ We beat Mario Odyssey – or at least Bowser. Next up is getting the rest of the moons and stars. Low-40's remaining.
    • ☀️ The heat continues  and is slated to continue through September. Tokyo broke it's record for number of  "fierce heat" days this summer at 26 and it's not done yet. On the plus side it's become socially acceptable for men to carry sun umbrellas to protect them from the UV.

      Watching the morning news while writing this and it's going to be 37. Those days in London are looking dreamy. 
    • 💰 It took a couple of weeks for the NTA to approve all the things, but I finally got a NISA and bought my first stocks. I'm excited because rather than sending money back to the US each month to invest, I can keep it local. This saves me the Wise fees, removes a bunch of tracking that I probably should be doing more/better, and lets it grow tax-free (in Japan).

      Next step is to setup automation so I'm automatically saving and investing each month. Automating saving is one of those things that is a game changer for personal finance. Let computers remember to do it for me.
    • 📺 I stumbled upon this video about the foreign community in Yokohama from 1982. Fascinating watch.

  • The Week #269

    by
    • 🕹️ An hour a day and we've almost beat Mario Odyssey. It's turning out to be a much easier game than Mario 64, Sunshine, or Galaxy. Maybe it's because we can play 2 players (with me as Cappy (Mario's hat)) and that extra bit of help makes the bosses a bit easier? Or maybe the game is a bit easier than the others? 
    • 🫛 It hit #1 on the AppStore, so this isn't a hidden gem of an app, but Focus Friend is faantastic. It's a timer to help you focus by having a little bean that knits socks while you focus. If you use your phone while he's knitting he loses all of his work and looks really sad. But if you let him finish, you get socks, which you can exchange for decorations for his room. It's free and there are not any ads in the app. I will probably subscribe to it to support it so that it doesn't get ads.
    • 🏠 It feels like a new season (of life, not weather – summer isn't going anywhere 😩) is rapidly approaching. I'm starting to think that next time this year, we might not be in Izumi. As a physical structure, our house is fine and it has been great for these early years of Leo's life, but I'm not certain it matches me. I'm not a handy person nor am I interested in becoming one. I'd much rather pay a fee and let someone else think about and manage these things.

      More than the structure, I think it's just the location. Our focus when we bought this place was, we want a bit more space, being close to a primary school, and not being too far away from the in-laws so they could help while Leo was little. We nailed all of those, but it was the wrong optimization. Or at least it feels it now. Being somewhere closer to things, somewhere I could at least walk to a coffee shop when I need to get out of the house. Or be able to take out the trash whenever. A bit of actual convenience.

      They say (at least in the US) people typically own a home for 8 years, and we're on 6.

  • The Week #268

    by
    • 📝 We made a deal with Leo to motivate him to come back from behind and get his summer homework done. Once he finished it all, he could get a new game at Nojima (using the points I got from replacing the AC). After a brief period of just wanting to get the game now (nice try, kid!) the carrot worked. He finished all of his homework over the next few days and on Saturday we went to get a new game.
    • 🕹️ Watching kids try to decide which game to get at the shop gave me joy. No matter the game he picks, it's gonna be a good one. But to be in that position, lucky boy. Leo went with Super Mario Odyssey. The game is a lot of fun. In this game Mario's hat is actually a ghost name Cappy. 2 player mode lets the second player control  Cappy, which is a lot of fun.
    • 🏃 I went for a 5am run club run this week. My first run in 3 months. It felt good to just go and really potter about listening to Roderick on the Line (Want other things) . I will endeavour to start making it out on a regular basis again. Doubt I'll hit 100 runs this year, but we'll see how we go. There's 19 weeks remaining in the year and 75 runs to meet that mark. Very low probability.
    • 🗣️ I've now listen to my second episode of Unpacking Japan, so I reckon that makes me a regular. This time it was with economist Jesper Koll and the bullish case for Japan and it has me convinced. Fascinating listening. Some interesting factoids like rather than stay in elite jobs at the Ministry of Finance or elsewhere, the younger generation are quitting and starting companies. Average age of inheritance in Japan is 62. Give it a listen (or a watch).
  • by
    5am run club
    It’s been too long.

    3.0km

    22.6min

    18.4m climbed

    156.3avg bpm

  • The Week #267

    by
    • ☔️ It rained for the first time in at least a month and with that the temperatures dropped for a few days. It was actually pleasant outside around 6am. Unfortunately it seems like the heat is back on schedule for the coming weeks.
    • 💨 The air conditioner in my office decided to go kaput mid-workday. Thankfully it was on a Friday, but still not ideal. I think it failed because I (purposely) left it on to help regulate the temp in my office (where my home server and storage live) while we were in London. Nothing extreme either, keep the temp at 28c. I think just being on for that length of time is what did it in.

      Costs to repair ranged from "That makes sense" to "May as well just buy a new one", so rather than pay for someone to come out just to say "actually, I'm just going to replace it" (sunk cost fallacy perhaps?), I went to the local big-box electronics store and bought a new one. This time I went with Daikin a) they're the best, b) a buddy works there, c) it cost, after installation, what I was expecting. As the temp as dropped, I haven't really been able to test it out test it out yet, but the app to control it remotely is super responsive (and in English! A rarity for domestic appliances).
    • 💰 Interactive Brokers started offering NISA (retirement) accounts where, as a US-person, it looks like I'd be able to save in a tax advantaged way for retirement, rather than my paying taxes as I go route... (at least in the growth part, tsumitate remains off limits because mutual funds are PFIC).  I am probably unreasonably excited about this.

      👆 This prompted me to start thinking about budgeting and conscious spending plans and it's been quite cathartic (especially after having a major appliance fail immediately after a trip to one of the most expensive cities in the world (💸💸)). Re-thinking where money flows each month, how it could serve me and my current priorities better and how I can re-deploy existing capital to better prepare for the future is really helpful. I should do these reviews more than once every 5 years 😬.
    • 📺 I watched most of Ramit Sethi's How to get Rich (Rich in the sense of living a rich life, not in the sense of money, though financial stability is often core to that). Having read his book years ago the general advise (automate monthly savings (so it happens consistently) into tax-advantaged accounts at a low-cost provider like Vanguard and buy index funds and forget about it) is old hat to me, it's good reminders and it's fun to follow along as people sort their financial house to help them reach their goals. You can't help but root for them.
1 of 706 Next