The Monday Read

No Time to Die Edition

Saw the new 007 film on Friday with my wife. We went to the new Aeon Cinema down the road, and caught the morning showing (8:30!). My first time in the Aeon, we got the fancy armchair seats. Very civilised.

The film was good, probably the best Bond film for a while. There were some dumb bits, but some good scenes and overall it was a good watch.

For some reason, for the rest of Friday and all of Saturday I ended up pretty down/depressed. Don’t think it was the film, although it might have been (some of the themes could have resonated a bit). Feeling a lot better now after a lot of exercise and some sleep.

The Forum

The Forum is doing well (16,009 posts to date). Here are the latest active threads:

RetireJapan Online Conference (save the date)

The inaugural RetireJapan online conference will be held on Labor Thanksgiving Day (November 23rd). It will be free and held through Zoom. More details nearer the time. Recordings will be made available for people that can’t make it on the day (where possible) but do come and join us if you can.

This week’s books

Still ploughing through Dune Messiah this week. It’s not quite as good as Dune, but necessary to get through to reach the later books in the series.

Also picked up Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, mainly based on the positive reviews.

This week’s links

  1. This is such an important concept, but I think many people don’t get it: Don’t Get Rich – Get Wealthy
  2. Some interesting tools to acquire (Twitter thread)? Here are 5 threads from world-class Fintwitters
  3. This was good (more Twitter): The average person has to make 10 good decisions in their life
  4. We took our cats to the city pet crematorium, but this might be a useful option (even more Twitter): Pet death in Japan
  5. The taxes would kill this in Japan: A hamster has been trading cryptocurrencies in a cage rigged to automatically buy and sell tokens since June – and it’s currently outperforming the S&P 500
  6. Enjoyed this book review: The Scout Mindset
  7. This sounds annoying (Reddit): The financial institution I work for is about to be strong-armed by the FSA into making immigrant customer continuously update their residence expiration date
  8. Love the idea of this, don’t fancy trying to set it up: Working from orbit (VR)
  9. These sound familiar: Three investing mistakes that cost me
  10. Haven’t really seen this in Japan so far: Inflation in Time & Inconvenience
  11. Deliciously catty book review: Hello, Habits by Fumio Sasaki
  12. This was useful to consider: 10-Step Map for an Early Retirement Plan
  13. Someday I would like to learn to do this: The Secrets of The World’s Greatest Freediver
  14. It’s a good point: Whither Tartaria?

What do you think? Anything good in there?

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6 Responses

  1. #10 – probably common knowledge by now, but due to supply shortages, auto companies have had some shutdowns for new vehicle production–I was warned by my Honda dealer that if I wanted a new car to order early, since it now may take up to six months to get certain new cars. And it may be an outlier, but I’ve also read that a new Suzuki Jimny make take up to a year (someone on the forum here?).

    As in the US, where there are also vehicle shortages, this carries over into a shortage of–and higher prices for–used cars.

  2. Also saw Bond this weekend. Definitely the best since Skyfall. There is some interesting chat about this one on the Jame Bond subreddits. How they wanted to pay homage to the old Bonds while sending off Craig. So a lot of the campiness and gadgets were a call back to the older movies. While still retaining the human nature of Craig’s Bond, having feelings, being fallible, etc.

    There are a lot of people that think much of the story was edited and changed because of the pandemic. Not to give too much away but the story might ring a little close to home and the movie was essentially made before the pandemic. The main bad guy never really explained why he is doing what he is doing. There is a lot of thoughts that they cut out a ton his screen time and focused more on Madeline instead. It makes sense… either way it was a fun movie.

    1. I was just thinking this morning that I’d forgotten the reason for the evil plan… I guess they didn’t bother explaining it???

  3. Hi Ben, I’ve just started a FIRE blog on my own journey in Tokyo. I plan to retire here as an expat Canadian
    with my husband. As a loyal follower of your blog, of course, I promote Retire Japan to the expat community as well. I am a beginner blogger and beginner investor so check it out:　https://expatcanadianintokyo.com

    Please spread the word and let me know what you think. Thanks.

    Reply

    2. You should have some way for people to subscribe to your blog (either by email or through RSS or similar).