Rainy Season Edition
Seems like the rainy season hit Sendai over the weekend. Recently we’ve had really long, cool rainy seasons up here. We’ll see how long it lasts this year!
I got up to 5*1000m on the rowing machine this week. Remarkeably easy to do while watching a film. This was a good purchase.
In related news, I started watching Billions on Netflix yesterday. This may have been a mistake. The first episode was good and I see there are… at least 72 episodes, some of which have not been made yet. Dammit.
In a rare instance of procrastination resulting in productivity, I have two blog posts written and ready to go next week. They are pretty good too. お楽しみ!
The Forum
The forum was great this week, and actually inspired one of my blog posts directly.
This week’s books
I finished reading Project Hail Mary, the new book by Andy Weir (who self-published The Martian on his blog before it got picked up by a publisher and made into a Matt Damon film). Basically it’s a similar reading experience to The Martian: completely different story, requires a bit more suspension of disbelief, but the same kind of protagonist with lots of science nuggets. It’s essentially MacGyver in space. I really enjoyed it 🙂
This week’s links:
- I’m actually going to sit down with a piece of paper and try to answer these in detail: Five useful questions (Seth Godin)
- I just remembered angry Ikea employee guy and rewatching him made me happy: Scott Seiss on Twitter
- All the more reason to try and prepare for retirement as well as you can: Nursing services in Japan juggling financial solvency and users’ well-being
- I’m hoping to work solely online/remote in the future: Technology saves the world
- I think this is a great idea. Should really speed things up: More than 2,300 companies to vaccinate 11 mil employees, families
- This looks like a great experience (much better than actually climbing Fuji): Mt. Fuji Sunrise Hike – Eboshidake in the Minami Alps
- RetireJapan post from the past: five years ago to be exact. It’s interesting to reread it now and think about how things turned out: Letting go
- This rings very true: 【何でだろう？】1億円持っていてもリタイアしない理由
- Just need to work a bit harder: Harder Than It Looks, Not As Fun as It Seems
- I’d wondered why Japan is so obsessed with hydrogen: The Best Way to Judge Any Green Energy Policy
- I know this feeling: Blink
- I hadn’t really thought about this possibility, but it would be fairly welcome: How to prepare for a lengthy bull market
- Good to think about: What percentage should you have in stocks and bonds
What do you think? Anything good in there? #2 for me this week I think 🙂
Re: #10 – Japan tried but failed to develop renewable energy tech (including batteries), losing competitive advantage to the likes of China.
Meanwhile, Japan has been investing heavily in the entire LNG infrastructure chain as their preferred coal alternative. Because the hydrogen value chain can be integrated with LNGs, Japan’s only logical and viable play is to go all-in on supporting widespread hydrogen adoption. It’s TINA for Japan.
Hydrogen is the dream for anyone trying to sell complex and expensive infrastructure… which we all know Japan Inc. specializes in. Cue METI and its rah-rah efforts to bring Japan Inc. on board, promising heavy support (both marketing and monetary), all done in the hope of a virtuous circle being created that results in Japan Inc. leading the world in hydrogen tech.
Although it might work, I’m guessing that due to hydrogen’s high infrastructure cost, and longer timeline to adoption, it will be usurped by other alternatives that are quickly dropping in price. Once the easier, cheaper option is proven to work, it will be difficult to dislodge it with a more expensive and more time consuming model. As such, while hydrogen will have a place, it will likely be left to more niche end-uses.
That makes sense. My (totally amateur) take is that hydrogen might be good for ships/planes(?)/buildings/energy storage, but passenger vehicles and homes will probably go with solar and batteries.
Why bother putting in the whole delivery infrastructure when we already have an electric grid?