The Monday Read

Snowboarding Edition

I went snowboarding last weekend with my wife and granddaughter, for the first time in two years (the last time was in Feb 2020, just as Covid was getting started).

We stayed at Appi again (the main hotel there was just bought by IHG, so I was able to use some of my vast stash of points for some free nights). The place was much the same, but there were very few people there despite the excellent snow this year, and the discounts for Tohoku residents on lift passes, etc.

Great for us as we pretty much had the place to ourselves (empty slopes and no queues for lifts), but not great for the resort. I wonder how long they will be able to stay in business?

Japan Personal Finance/Investing Sites

I often say RetireJapan is the only Japan-based site writing about personal finance and investing in English, but of course there are many general sites that have articles about financial topics, blogs about personal finance, and sites about investing.

Let’s make a list and link to them from RetireJapan. Please send me any sites you know of, or leave a comment below. It is fine to post your own site too. I’ll check them out and add them to the websites page on the main site (which is in need of a rewrite!).

Water Heater Woes

Regular readers may remember last week’s post, where I lamented the death of our gas water heater and grumbled about my wife vetoing my attempt to replace it when we renovated our kitchen a couple of years ago.

Well, we got a guy out to look at it, and it is well and truly dead. Rusted through the bottom so it leaked water and shorted itself out.

Even better, there is a shortage of gas water heaters in Japan, so we have been told it will likely be at least three or four months before we can get a replacement.

Great.

The Forum

The Forum is doing well (19,142 posts to date). Here are the latest active threads:

This week’s books

No new books this week (I’m still finishing up the ones from last week) but I did pick up Andrew Hallam’s new book Balance. Looking forward to starting that one next.

  1. I’ve always liked the idea of a sabbatical, haven’t managed to take one yet: The Great Resignation has morphed into the Great Sabbatical
  2. Diversification for longevity: Diversification Isn’t Undefeated But It Never Gets Blown Out
  3. My life feels like this looking back on it: when I was little I wanted to be a vet, then a spy. I studied Chinese at university. Never dreamed I’d be an English teacher in Japan: Fluke
  4. On the subject of snowboarding: The Rescue Artists of the New Avalanche Age
  5. This ties into my next blog post: Casualties of your own success

This is probably the shortest Monday Read ever. My apologies. It was a very busy week!

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11 Responses

  1. My wife and I have wanted to visit Appi. Can you share any details about the IHG hotel? We also have points we might use.

    1. There are three! The big hotel is now a Crowne Plaza, there is a Holiday Inn, and the Intercontinental will open soon.

      If you want to use the restaurants you need to call them in advance and book (the hotel won’t tell you this).

      The CP has a very nice pool (you have to pay but worth it IMO).

      There is a Salomon ski/board rental shop under the CP. You can book online before going (if you don’t they make you do it on your smartphone which is a pain). You can also buy lift tickets online and skip the queue/get a discount.

    1. Done! Would appreciate a link to RJ (we really need to improve our current dreadful Google juice) 😀

  3. have always wanted to visit Appi ,how was it?spoiled for choice here in yamagata so have only been there in summer..
    what are the discounts you talk about ?
    japan skiing is already a great deal compared to overseas ,then there are a number of deals like snow magic(free for 19,20yr olds)etc..

    1. Appi is great, the snow was good and surprisingly uncrowded.

      There is a huge discount for Iwate residents, and a smaller one for Tohoku residents on lift passes. I imagine there are also others that we were too lazy or clueless to find.

  4. There’s a new international boarding school opening up in Appi Kogen in August (Harrow Appi) so I imagine that’ll be a big boost for the resort once it’s up to the full capacity of 900 students.

    1. We checked it out (granddaughter is nine now) but the 9m a year fees were a slight downer. Plus I don’t think she’s the boarding type.

      I suspect they will struggle to fill the school as long as border restrictions are in place!

      1. #3 – Fluke. Back in late ’70 they put a year’s worth of birthdays in a big bin, and started pulling them out one by one. My birthday was the 11th one drawn, which became my draft number. Tho not 1st, when you line up 365 birthdays, number 11 was effectively the same thing.
        In the past I’ve described it as butterfly wings, rather than a fluke. It lends a little more sense to it. If not for that lottery, life would have unfolded very differently, and I wouldn’t be here writing this right now.

  5. I highly recommend Ben Felix’s YouTube videos and Podcast, Rational Reminder. He provides sensible personal finance advice.

    He recently interviewed Andrew Hallum, and the podcast is one of the more interesting 60 minutes listens in regards to personal finance, happiness, and living a good life. Here is a link to the podcast: https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/186

    I also really enjoy JD Roth’s Apex Money, where he posts 3-4 blog posts relating to money from around the internet.