The Monday Read

It’s the First Conference Edition

The conference is on Tuesday and if you haven’t signed up yet (why would you not have signed up yet?) you have until Monday afternoon or until we hit 500 people (we’re on 425 now) to do so.

Organising this conference has been a great experience so far (fingers crossed we don’t have any issues on the day). I’m really looking forward to it and I’m hugely grateful to our speakers and also to Daniel, our conference magus.

Hope to see some of you there!

The Forum

The Forum is doing well (17,477 posts to date). Here are the latest active threads:

RetireJapan Online Conference (save the date and check your spam folder)

The inaugural RetireJapan online conference will be held on Labor Thanksgiving Day (November 23rd) from 10:00 to 16:00, with a break 12:00-13:00. It will be free and held through Zoom. More details here! 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. You don’t have to come for all of it, just sample the bits you think might be interesting 🙂

If you do want to attend, please make sure you register through the event page as soon as possible. The conference is free, but we may need to limit numbers if we get a lot of interest due to Zoom constraints (we currently have over 425 people signed up to attend!).

We sent an email out on Tuesday the 16th and some people said it went into their spam folder. Please check and tag it as not spam, etc. if that happened to you so that you can received the Zoom link on Monday evening.

This week’s books

No books this week, far too much to do! Also rewatched all the Daniel Craig Bond films, which may have something to do with me reading less…

Casino Royale -> No Time to Die -> Spectre/Skyfall -> Quantum of Solare would be my ranking, from best to worst. This was not a popular opinion on Twitter!

This week’s links

1. I wonder if we are going to see inflation in Japan? I’m guessing not much: Weekend reading: Move on up
2. Toyota managing to disappoint me again: Media Mix, Nov. 13, 2021
3. Story in #2 starting to attract more widespread attention: Japan automakers take the hard road
4. Sounds reasonable: Austria orders nationwide lockdown for the unvaccinated
5. This is a fantastic short film (70m or so) about investing for beginners: Index funds the movie
6. Not likely to get better as automation comes in, either: Wages in Japan, alone among OECD countries, have been stagnant over 30 years
7. Food for thought: Are bonds done?
8. This ties into the 100 Baggers thing: Buying low is the easy part
9. As long as the war stays cold… China has started making the same mistakes as the Soviets
10. I enjoyed this podcast episode: How to De-Escalate Conflicts with Doug Noll
11. Apparently these are paying 7% now??? Series I savings bonds: A safe investment with a high return
12. Derek Sivers on scuba diving and panic attacks: Scuba, panic, empathy
13. RetireJapan post from the past: ’tis the season to buy… expensive leather bags. Only in Japan: Buying Randoseru
14. This seems like window dressing: The Prius-hacking Silicon Valley star shaping Toyota’s future
15. This really annoys me. I step out in front of drivers around my home, to train them (my grandkids are walking around our neighbourhood): Only 30% of Japanese drivers stop for pedestrians at crosswalks, survey says
16. Thankfully, this has nothing to do with my life: The Golden Age of Grift
17. Actually pretty good: WHEN YOU SEE A GRIZZLY IT’S TOO LATE TO RUN AWAY. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE NEXT MARKET CRASH
18. This would change everything: Cash for all: Lee Jae-myung’s radical plan to reshape South Korea
19. Essay about all the Pays in Japan as well as other things: Payments in Japan
20. This is a huge (stealth) development: In major shift, Japan looks to allow more foreign workers to stay indefinitely

What do you think? Anything good in there?

The Monday Read, going out to more than 2,375 subscribers each week. Please share this post/email with friends/colleagues who may be interested in it.

If you were forwarded the email you can sign up to the list here.