The Monday Read: Finding a New Path
Take a step to the side and breathe I took this photo in Surrey by taking a couple of steps off a rather busy road. I think there might be some kind of metaphor there. RetireJapan TV RetireJapan TV will be back on March 17th from 20:00. We’ll be talking about side hustles/part-time jobs in […]
The Monday Read: The Last of the Lemons
Now it’s just getting silly I was in Belfast in Northern Ireland briefly this week, for the first time. Nice place, but I wish it had been under different circumstances. And then, the evening of my first full day there, I got food poisoning or norovirus (the latter seems more likely). Really felt like the […]
The Monday Read: More Lemons
I’m getting tired of trying to make lemonade 2025 is really trying its best to defeat me. Have an unexpected trip to Europe this week, hence the lack of new content here on the blog and on YouTube this week. Apologies. I’ll be back in early March and hopefully get back into the swing of […]
The Monday Read: Toyota has no cars
Manufacturing issues, incompetence, or a cunning plan? We have four grandkids in Sendai now (and two abroad) so my wife has decided she wants to get a minivan. I had to agree, even though they are not my favourite class of car. Recently we took a ski trip to Appi with one(!) grandchild, and we […]
The Monday Read: Myaku Myaku Fever
Is the Osaka Expo going to be a huge bust? I saw the other day that the Osaka Expo is starting in less than three months. Is anyone planning to go? The website to buy tickets is a complicated mess (you need to book in order to enter a lottery in order to book?). I […]
The Monday Read: The future of Japan
Is likely to be different to how it is now Just spent a few days at Appi Ski Resort in Iwate with my wife and granddaughter. We’ve been coming here for a few years now and there have been some massive changes during that time. The first big one was when the hotels were rebranded […]
The Monday Read: Brighter Skies Ahead
Sometimes all you need is a bit of perspective This week I published a slightly gloomy blog post. I was feeling a bit down, feeling like I wasn’t making progress, feeling frustrated. I got a lot of nice comments and suggestions, which helped me look at the situation from a new perspective. And I also […]
The Monday Read: More and more
Medical hijinks and a scam artist I had more new interesting medical experiences this week (just some tests, nothing serious) which I may write up on the blog in the future. And my wife received a call from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare informing her that she was suspected of buying illegal drugs […]
The Monday Read: Influenza
That’s when I knew I messed up Last Sunday I got back to Japan after the tiring and very stressful study abroad trip to The Philippines. Finally I could relax. Big mistake. On Tuesday my granddaughter was crying in the morning. I asked her what was wrong but she didn’t answer. We checked her temperature. […]
The Monday Read: Tadaima
What doesn’t kill you… makes you very tired indeed I’m still helping my wife with her language school (mostly admin or special tasks). One of those tasks was to accompany ten students on a trip to Cebu in The Philippines to study English. Reader, it almost killed me. First, we got to Narita and went […]