The Monday Read

Slowly easing back into it

We’re on a bit of a roll now -two in a row 🙂

Occasionally a link will expire: my apologies. The Monday Read content gets gathered from when the previous Monday Read goes up, then goes on the blog, then eventually gets sent out in the weekly newsletter. The lag can be considerable.

I’m starting to get my mojo back it seems -even have a few ideas for blog posts lined up. お楽しみ！

And I’m actually enjoying the rainy season at the moment: cool temperatures, drizzle, not too humid yet. Makes for a different experience cycling to work.

This week’s links

  1. He might be right. Also the fewer of your friends are on FB, the less fun it is: Facebook’s fatal flaw
  2. A few good ones: 33 Things I Stole From People Smarter Than Me on the Way to 33
  3. Only 1.5m people have iDeCo accounts??? Why? Easily the best way to save for retirement in Japan: iDeCo（個人型確定拠出年金）の加入者数等について
  4. I had to go to immigration with a friend just to get information because their website is terrible and they don’t answer the phone: Japan’s analog government struggles to accept anything online
  5. More stories like this, better treatment for kids who look a bit different? Baseballer Louis Okoye lauded for tweets on prejudice against multiracial Japanese people
  6. Pretty inspiring stuff! Walter Schloss: His rules that beat the market
  7. I despair of this being addressed: World has six months to avert climate crisis, says energy expert
  8. This is very important for me. I like to get value for money, regardless of the price: Enjoying Paying for Value
  9. Stunning as ever: Hiking: Minami Komagatake
  10. MMM fears no pandemic: Here’s How to Retire Far Earlier (Even If Another Downturn Strikes)
  11. One of my heroes: Martin Lewis: ‘Having money is not happiness, but not having money destroys lives’
  12. 78m people need to install it for it to work effectively: Japan’s virus contact-tracing app gets 2.7 mil downloads in 3 days
  13. Unforeseen consequences: The Air Conditioning Effect
  14. This article misses the most exciting consequence of remote work: being able to live anywhere in Japan. Japan’s Work Culture Gets a Needed Covid-19 Shock
  15. The nenkin website got a makeover. If you make an account you can check your contributions and projected payout.
  16. Not sure why I enjoyed this very long rant about something I kind of, sort of understand. But I did. Warning: it is very long indeed. A Tale of Two Talebs
  17. This was great. I do enjoy poker from time to time: How I Became a Poker Champion in One Year
  18. Some interesting background: When the Virus Hit, Japan Already Had an Army of Contact Tracers

What do you think? Anything good in there? Quite a good mix this time!

This week’s books

Really looking forward to getting started on those last three.

7 Responses

  1. Re #4, did you know that Japan’s immigration department started an online application service last year? It is not worth knowing about, because we can’t use it anyway. It can only be used by companies who are submitting applications on behalf of their employees, or by professional advisors to the company (lawyers, scriveners, etc.).
    As for registering an Airbnb-style vacation rental, that is “an extremely complicated and burdensome process” by design.

    1. Huh. That is kind of typical.

      Online visa applications would be a great idea. Upload the documents then they can notify you by email (or by having you log into their system) of any requests or missing paperwork. Best of all, it could all be done remotely by workers in Aomori, Tottori, or similar.

      Never happen, eh? How would the hankos work?

  2. Re: 12
    Interesting that nearly 3m people have downloaded the app, when less than half a million have even been tested for the virus….

    1. Sadly that is nowhere near enough, eh?

      And now that it is broken it seems increasingly unlikely that people will trust it!

  3. I found The Road dark but probably just my interpretation. Cleaning up my current books in order to read IQ84 which I finally picked up.

    Regarding finance, I’ve been following Jared Dillian for a bit. He’s gone off and created a service to help people get their finances in order. Pay off debt, control spending, invest, penny wise, pound foolish (very anti Suzy Orman). He’s got a radio show too that people can call into if you’re awake as he’s east coast USA.

    There is paid for content on the site but there’s a lot of free stuff that is updated frequently. It may be of interest.
    https://www.jareddillianmoney.com/

  4. About “The Road”: the movie is also pretty decent, and, if you happen to be a gamer, “The Last Of Us” on PS3/PS4 is, in my personal opinion, superior to “The Road” on a very similar theme.

  5. I, too, had to spend two days at immigration renewing my resident card during the pandemic. The second visit irked the most as was just to pick up the card. Surely immigration could have sent the card by registered post? It also appears I picked up a virus after carefully avoiding people and public transport for 3 months in Japan around that day. Any other stories like this out there? I’ll collect them and make an article if I can.