We were at a wedding on Saturday in Chiba. Ended up being a nice break going down and staying the night before. Always good to get out of the daily grind.
Doing the things you want
I was talking to a friend the other day and I realised that I am not getting round to some things that are important to me. I say jiu-jitsu is important, but I have only trained once this year. I say I want to grow the RetireJapan YouTube channel, but I didn’t post a video last week.
Both of these need to change. I need to align my actions with my (stated) desired outcomes.
In order to do so, I will announce my targets and results publicly here each week, and donate money to Second Harvest Japan each time I miss my target (technically I should donate money to something I disagree with in order to motivate myself, but I don’t want to do that).
So each week I am in Sendai, am able to go to work, and our club is open I will train at least three times per week (Monday to Sunday). If I am injured I will still go and watch a class. If I fail to do so I will donate 5,000 yen to Second Harvest Japan.
Each week (Monday to Sunday) I will upload a video to the RetireJapan YouTube channel. If I fail to do so I will donate 5,000 yen to Second Harvest Japan. The metrics section below will be in future Monday Reads.
Metrics
Jiu-jitsu training sessions: 1 (fail)
YouTube videos: 0 (fail)
Consequences: none (start next week)
JLCollins’ New Book
I submitted something to JLCollins’ new book, Pathfinders, a few months ago. And got this email last week 🙂
A Favour
Could you click on this to share a quick tweet about RetireJapan? Testing a new service.
YouTube
Thank you for your support of the RetireJapan YouTube channel. We didn’t manage to upload a video last week, but more are coming. Please subscribe if you haven’t already, it really helps.
The Forum
The Forum is doing well (26,058 posts so far). Here are the latest active threads:
This week’s books
I continued my journey down the Daniel Priestley rabbit hole. I finished 24 Assets and started Entrepreneur Revolution. They are both good, but Oversubscribed was definitely the standout for me.
This week’s links
- I don’t really feel regret. Prefer to learn from things and move on: Risk and regret
- Check out Mountains of Wisdom -mostly short little blog posts about life (in Japan/on mountains)
- Can never have too many Investing for Beginners videos (Ali Abdaal YouTube)
- I am not a fan of political aristocracy: The Next Kishi
- I will sell my mutual funds when they are pried from my cold dead hands: Buy & Hold is Dead, Long Live Buy & Hold
- Sounds like a recipe for depopulation: Why So Many People Feel Like Outsiders in Japan
- Someone likes the new visa proposals (I think the proposals are missing the point and Japan should be trying to attract farmers and manual labourers): Japan’s Revised Immigration Rule
- Incredible that this is just… ignored… in Japan (BBC video): Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop
- Saw the headlines about masks, so this was very interesting: Do masks work?
- JLCollins with wisdom: Things important, and unimportant
- Quite liked this from Tim Ferriss: Revisiting Warren Buffett’s Advice to Me in 2008 (Plus: 7 Lessons for Young Investors)
- This is horrendous and I really hope the courts fix it: Widows of Japanese expats receive tax shock over pensions
- This was kind of interesting. Had no idea of the logistical issues: What Happens When the Army Needs 36,000 Kettlebells, Fast
- I love the cynicism in this (AI): Place your bets
- The Reformed Broker’s autobiography: The Joke
- We’re around 90-10 or so at the moment: Is It Realistic to Have 100% of Your Portfolio in Stocks?
- Designing a house is incredibly complex: Simple Plans
- These government stats on population projections are wild: 人口関係参考資料
- A contrarian view? Low Birth Rate Can Be a Gift
- One way to fight inflation: Don’t Buy the Six-Dollar Cauliflower
What do you think? Anything interesting in there?
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#20 (or #10, things important?)– I was out this afternoon to shop a little, scored a cheap head of cauliflower, even tho we still had some at home. It was ¥298, rather than the ¥398 that is has been, and it was both bigger than usual and very fresh-looking.
Made my day…!
On #16. Let’s be careful about taking allocation advice in regards to bonds from American sources.
For them treasuries are risk free.
The argument for 100% global equities and increasing cash allocation with age and comfort level is much stronger for yen investors.
(Or JGBs and term deposits if yield can be found)
It is really interesting about 12. I recently talked to a representative lawyer in regards to situation where both the spouses are foreigners from my local municipality. Highly encourage foreigners to alias they are subjected to the same predicaments. Good for the woman in Kansai to have read about another’s issue.
#17 sounds absolutely exhausting. I know it’s the house you’re (hopefully) going to live in for the rest of your life, but the amount of work and red tape you have to go through is insane.
Perhaps, but in reading that, there are a few points that make me wonder. I’ve never heard of needing to put in both a well and septic for a house here–I think that that was necessary should certainly have been known prior to the purchase of the lot. That should have been at least obliquely referenced in most any info sheet/ad for the property. This info was probably right there close to where it said there was no toshi gas (都市ガス, and a call to the relevant city office could have clarified that before anything had been signed, before any deposit put down. Similar with cable/fiber, that also should have been clear before deciding on the property.
And from my point of view, something like in-floor heating, or the bulky heating units they decided on (vs wall units for that and a/c), along with lighting and some other ‘troubles’ they ran into, should have been clearly stated and specified up front, before any contract for the house was signed.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, they may have been hustled into a contract, perhaps to the builder’s advantage, and placing too much trust in comments or clauses stating, “oh, you can customize that later”, when it should have been “buyer beware”.