The Monday Read

Jiu-jitsu/Freedom Edition

Well, I have another week of full-time teaching left. In early August my wife’s new teacher will start, and I will finally be able to transition to a more balanced schedule, where I have time for myself and RetireJapan as well as helping with my wife’s school.

You cannot imagine how much I am looking forward to this.

However, I don’t know what it is going to be like. I’ve been working 2-3 jobs for the last twenty years or so. Sudden freedom is likely to be a challenge as well as an opportunity.

I get the feeling building a solid routine is going to be important.

In the meantime, I made it back to jiu-jitsu last week and I have DOMS like you wouldn’t believe. Also gave myself mild heatstroke cycling there and back and doing almost an hour of sparring. Today someone kicked me in the chest by accident and something cracked.

I’ve missed it so much 😀

Twitter thread

Wrote a very basic new thread this week about starting to invest in Japan. Might be good to share!

YouTube

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The Forum

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This week’s books

Still reading The Shadow of the Torturer and enjoying it.

I use this website (12ft ladder) that lets you see paywalled articles. So far it seems to work really well, although it doesn’t work on all websites. If you have trouble reading any of the links give it a try!

  1. This is an interesting video about the Japanese entrepreneur who brought McDonald’s to Japan.
  2. It’s not just the yen that has weakened: The Yen and the Dollar Milkshake Theory
  3. I need to read this every week until it sinks in: Why You’ll Probably Never Run Out Of Money
  4. This seems extremely shortsighted: The Making of an Underclass: Japan’s Neglect of Immigrant Education
  5. This doesn’t seem surprisingly expensive… maybe I’ve been here too long? Albatross by the sea
  6. Long-term illness? Where are all the workers?
  7. Really like this idea from Sean: Walking – Rucking

What do you think? Anything interesting in there?

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9 Responses

  1. Hi Ben.. Thanks so much for all of the weekly emails, and links to articles, books, etc. I just finished watching the video on Den Fujita and McDonalds in Japan. The story and journey to success for Fujita-san was/is amazing. Also, the article on “Why You’ll Probably Never Run Out Of Money” was a great read. Makes a lot of sense.

    thank you!

  2. That Monevator article was really interesting reading. I’m currently in the UK, and it’s pretty much all true. Access to healthcare has never been more difficult. Minor issues simply don’t get looked at. I had to go to A&E a couple of months back – it was a 12 hour wait. I wasn’t so bad and it turned out to be minor, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to watch some of the other patients around me drop dead.

  3. I’m in my 60’s and have started having all sorts of minor pains and aches. Will definitely try Rucking (after the summer heat!). It is possible that our bodies evolved to carry loads, and not doing so can lead to weakened muscles. And, healthy people tend to have good muscle tone.

    1. DM – I recommend reading The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. That’s where I got the inspiration to try rucking from.

    2. At that age and older, strength training of some kind is often recommended, or at least not to be ignored. A good read on that is reddit’s bodyweight fitness wiki: https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/wiki/index Another site is https://hundredpushups.com Ignore the ads and plans, go direct to ‘The Program’, or the ‘Other Programs’ dropdowns. The anytime/anywhere aspects of those are positives. Personally, for the aero side of things, cycling has been a longtime passion, but you do zoom by a lot of things–one great aspect of walking is encapsulated in the saying, “If you want to see the most in the shortest distance, walk.”

  4. Thanks for the interesting links, always. I recognized so much of myself in the Alina and Dave examples given. Not wanting to run out of money, we worked way past the point we needed or wanted to. When we die we will certainly be leaving too much behind – a problem in Japan with its inheritance tax. So we are busily checking out legal options to transfer ours money to our children in ways to minimize inheritance and/or gift taxes.

    1. I’m planning to give our daughters and grandchildren a million yen a year each -that’s below gift tax and will make a big difference to their life now, much more than inheriting a larger amount later.

      Die with Zero is a good exploration of the subject: https://amzn.to/3zvZLoj

      Although I don’t have a problem with dying with too much -that means I had enough for the rest of my life 😉

  5. I really enjoyed 2. Well, I don’t enjoy the effects of 2. but the explainer and article are quite interesting. So it’s not just because of low interests rates in Japan (though that doesn’t help) causing investors to sell JPY and buy USD, it’s the increasing need for USD globally so countries and companies can do business. Just hoping that somehow the yen regains it strength, but I’m very glad that I have at least a portion of my investments in USD (mostly indirectly through emaxis all country) which, even with the falling S&P500/NASDAQ, has offset it mostly (something like approximately a 18% gain in USD to the JPY at the same time as a 15% loss in value YTD, based on my quick lookups of some charts).