The Monday Read: Memento Mori
Sometimes life gives you a little nudge Last week I had a bit of a wake up call: talked about it in this YouTube video last week if you haven’t seen it already. Like the Roman emperors of old, I got a reminder that I am not in control of things, no matter how much […]
2024 Roundup
One post to rule them all… This is the RetireJapan roundup post for 2024. We’ll be going through some successes and failures, as well as my lists of favourite blog posts and videos. Here is the 2023 post if you want to see what that year looked like. 2024 was the year of reps I […]
The Monday Read: Merry Xmas
Heading into the holiday season It’s the last day of classes at my wife’s school today. Tomorrow the winter holiday begins and we’re not back at work until January 7th. I really enjoy this time of year. I started cooking Christmas dinner in 2004 after we got married (mainly because I missed it!) and I’ve […]
Progress Report 2024
The Progress Continues This is always one of my favourite posts of the year. It’s a chance to look at my financial progress, and hopefully this will inspire others to work on their finances too. You can see last year’s post here (and follow the chain back through time if you are interested -the first […]
The Monday Read: Impostor syndrome
You have to grow into things Was not expecting to get my purple belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu this month. I don’t particularly feel like I deserve it, and had been expecting to train for at least one more year as a blue belt. But now that I have it I will just have to train […]
Japanese Health Care
Can be excellent, can be terrible. But you largely get to choose There was a loud crack as I flew toward the floor. Clearly everyone else heard it too, as my sparring partner immediately knelt down and asked if I was alright, and our coach ran over from the side of the mat. It’s a […]
The Monday Read: Winter is coming
Low single digits in Sendai, still pretty nice out though The photo is Nara seen from the hills above Nara Park. We were there last weekend and it was so warm we had the AC set to cold in the hotel room and the car. Today in Sendai it was 4 degrees with a nasty […]
Escape velocity
When your money grows faster than you can spend it This year my wife and I made a conscious effort to try to spend more money. We took trips, went to nice restaurants, spent money on ourselves and family. It’s actually quite difficult to break the saving and investing habit once you grind it for […]
The Monday Read: Meeting in Person
Zoom is great, but nothing beats a live audience I just finished a presentation at Nara JALT’s conference, in the middle of the beautiful city of Nara. The JALTCALL SIG kindly sponsored my presentation, and we had a great audience -lots of questions and engagement. Had some good conversations before and after too. The pandemic […]
The Monday Read: Snow!
Hoping for a good ski season I spent a couple of days in Appi ski resort this week, not for skiing but for a quick getaway with my wife. The hotels up there are much more reasonable out of season, so we were able to stay somewhere we really couldn’t afford in February. It’s also […]