Some FIRE Otaku from Sendai Edition
This post on reddit tickled me and this is now my Twitter handle for the rest of time 😉
New Podcast
I was on a podcast this week! The Deep in Japan podcast, by Jeff Krueger. Actually we recorded it a few weeks ago, but it was published this week. I think this might be my favourite podcast appearance so far, so do check it out.
The Forum
The Forum just passed 20,000 posts 🙂
Here are the latest active threads:
This week’s books
Still on the Reacher train. One Shot was excellent (and quite different from the movie), and The Hard Way is good so far.
This week’s links
- Another reason to get off fossil fuels: Absolute Power
- The other side of the coin? How Volodymyr Zelensky Defended Ukraine and United the World
- Digital warfare in the Ukraine era: Network wars
- This article is terrible: Why is Japan stuck in a wage rise rut?
- This is going on my LinkedIn: Getting solar panels in Japan
- Lots of good concepts in here: Sequence Of Returns Risk And How It Affects Your Retirement
- Really agree with this (but can’t actually implement it): Default now
- Rising prices don’t matter if you don’t buy stuff: Profit from Inflation
- Presumably this is more effective too (short YouTube video): Chart of the Week 📈 “So how did you two meet?”
- We need a higher minimum wage in Japan (still 800 yen in Sendai?): Japan ready for higher wages
- Like in many areas, we need to focus on efficiency and effectiveness: Opinion: Japan wastes a lot of money teaching English
- Pretty damning stuff (YouTube lecture): US Pandemic Response
- This seems like a no-brainer: World’s deepest hole offers ‘inexhaustible clean energy’
- Some of the stats in this are disgusting: Wash
- 500 planes at ~$100m each… damn: Who owns all the planes?
- Absolute travesty that Sendai is not in the top 25: Japan’s best cities
What do you think? Anything interesting in there?
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Hey – you’re early this week! And the last link: Kanazawa gets first place!?! 🙂
I spent six weeks in Kanazawa after the earthquake. It’s nice, but I wouldn’t rate it that high.
Especially with the increase in tourism after they built the new shinkansen line.
Also puzzling is Toyama and Matsumoto ranking as high as they do. Kobe and Hiroshima seem to have placed like I’d expect, but Fukuoka seems a little too far down. Maybe the author’s final comment reveals all: “I am not a statistician and this is not scientific.”
Just did a short trip to the Hokuriku area two weeks ago and Kanazawa is overrated.
“We need a higher minimum wage in Japan (still 800 yen in Sendai?”
The r/antiwork movement needs to come to Japan, but who am I kidding. The metoo movement lasted about 3 days here and was forgotten.
I just moved to a new city for a new uni job (well… 1 year ago next month). Of course, my wife followed. BIG CITY. With 9 universities and Jr. Colleges. My wife is a university professor with a master’s. Couldn’t find part-time teaching anywhere at any of the 9 schools. She was able to land a staff position at one of the major universities (it was that or a city hall job she was offered, same pay, more work). 1200 yen an hour!!! 40 years old, master’s degree, experience as a full-time prof, 1200 yen a hour. I saw on reddit yesterday an ice cream shop in Seatle Washinton, STARTS at 19$ an hour. If I wasn’t teaching, I would scoop icecream for 19$ an hour.
The way universities treat their staff is disgraceful. My place pays admin about 12万 a month, then forbids them from doing side jobs.
It’s as if they are supposed to live on the prestige of working for such an august institution…
Reap what we sow regarding academics. It’s really not good to see that the rate is so low. I was about 3000/hr for teaching English a few years back. I’d rate a uni prof way above my English teaching skills!
As a hiring manager at a Japanese company, I agree wages are low and I can’t compete for talent against multi-national companies. However, living in this country remains amazingly cheap. That $19/hr in Seattle’s spent before it gets to your bank account. It’s a complicated situation but one that’s bad if you’re considering working here for bit then moving elsewhere especially as the yen is starting to weaken.