The Monday Read: Health and Fitness Edition

This week I discovered that adding ナムル to a salad makes it 10x better

Now that I am unemployed (according to my wife) I have been focusing on health and fitness. Or, at least in my case, unhealth and unfitness.

On the health front, I am still committed to getting my weight down to a healthy 77kg by September (I have not been under 83kg in my adult life). This is going to be tough!

My new tool for this job is fasting. I’ve been learning about hormones and fasting, and have been trying several days of OMAD (one meal a day) per week. Most recently, I did a 60-hour fast last week.

One thing I learned from that is how much better I feel when I don’t eat late at night (I finish work at 22:00 most days, so used to get home 22:30, eat, and not get to bed until after 1am). My new plan is to be done eating by 7pm every day. This should help with sleep quality and quantity, and maybe speed up the weight loss too 😉

RetireJapan TV

We’ll be doing episode six of the first season of RetireJapan TV on Monday, with special guest Emil Gorgees. Emil is a mortgage broker in Tokyo, so he helps people find the best mortgage for their situation. Really looking forward to talking to him and getting his advice on various different scenarios 🙂

Rebel Finance School

On the subject of RJTV, our guests from last time, Alan and Katie Donegan, will be running their FREE personal finance course again this year. The Rebel Finance School starts in June and you can sign up here. There is no catch and no upsell. I took the course last year and it was very useful and fun.

YouTube

Thank you for your support of the RetireJapan YouTube channel. We published a new video on buying single shares on Japanese stock markets.

Charity drive

I have a monthly donation to charity:water but occasionally we’ll also ask people to consider donating here on the blog.

charity:water focuses on providing the infrastructure to bring clean drinking water to people that don’t have it. I can’t imagine anything more important than having safe water to drink so this is one of my main charities.

Please check out the RetireJapan campaign here and donate if you can.

Metrics

Jiu-jitsu training sessions: three (pass)
YouTube videos: one (pass)

Consequences: none (the system is working!)

The Forum

The Forum is doing well (27,079 posts so far). Here are the latest active threads:

This week’s books

Started reading The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is not a Disease, by Marc Lewis. Recommended by The Escape Artist, I am hoping it will give me some insight into controlling my habits better.

Product of the Week

Someone recommended this new protein yoghurt from Savas on Twitter, and it is really good. I’ve only found it at FamilyMart so far, but it is worth seeking out. Really creamy and great mouthfeel, more like dessert than a yoghurt 🙂

This week’s tune

Got slightly obsessed with this track this week. Enjoy (YouTube, explicit lyrics): Ice Cube & The Notorious B.I.G. – Hello Vs. Party & Bullshit (Matoma Remix)

This week’s links

  1. I’m fascinated with Derek’s life so integrated with the community. Very different from my own: The Localest of Local
  2. This feels right: Be Dignified, as a Rule
  3. Woah: The ground is quaking
  4. I’ve been enjoying Ali Abdaal’s newsletter for the last few months. Read or sign up to it here.
  5. Love this. I gave up my car a couple of years ago and wish more people would join me: Less Cars, More Money: My Visit to the City of the Future
  6. Glad I am post career rather than starting one this year: Can We See the Impact of Automation in the Economics Statistics?
  7. Woah2: What If You Owned No US Stocks?
  8. It’s nuanced: How much can retirees withdraw from their investments each year?
  9. I’ve been watching this interesting experiment for years now: The Slow and Steady passive portfolio update: Q1 2023
  10. Seems Japan is going to be very different in 100 years time: Half of unmarried people under 30 in Japan don’t want kids, survey finds
  11. Lots of interest in this one: Warren Buffett says he intends to add to Japanese stock holdings
  12. I’m at level 2. Level 3 would be great though: The three levels of wealth
  13. A reasonable take from Cal Newport: My Thoughts on ChatGPT
  14. A reminder for parents: The Needs Are So Modest
  15. I really enjoy Chris’ writing (I’m a paid subscriber). Here’s a taste: Some thing I really like about Taipei
  16. I’ve been getting into this recently: The Best Deal in the World Right Now
  17. Interesting background on the lack of IT professionals in Japan: METI’s 2025 “Digital Cliff, Part III
  18. Very clever blog post: Would You Rather Outperform During Bull Markets or Bear Markets?
  19. So true. Almost to the point of defeating the purpose of travel: The age of average
  20. After a 60-hour fast, pretty much anything tastes amazing: What Makes You Happy

What do you think? Anything interesting in there?

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15 Responses

  2. I’ve been fasting for 5- 6 years. Back on it now. Need a longer one too. I’ve pulled off 10 and 12 day fasts before. I’m 75 but still teaching , mainly at so called English camps.

    Have you had posts on inheritance taxes in Japan. Bringing in funds from Canada

    Cheers
    Colin

      1. Recently inherited some money from Canada (drinks on me!) and what the RetireJapan article says below is true:

        The entire 30m + 6m per heir tax-free allowance is then applied to that portion of the estate, massively reducing the tax burden compared to an inheritance in Japan.

        So under 300 thousand Canadian is not taxed. I also DO NOT HAVE TO FILE A TAX REPORT on them.
        My husband was so disbelieving that we don’t even have to file, that he is keeping the name of the Tax Officer who assured him of this in our appointment.

        The RetireJapan forum was a great resource when I researched inheritance and taxes.

  3. 5. When I was living in Sendai I didn’t have a car and I didn’t need it. City life could easily be a lot more centered around a car-less lifestyle and a project like the one mentioned in the article would be appealing.
    Now that I live in countryside Gifu though, it would be very difficult without a car. Further distances to work and less public transport, not to mention getting kids to and from preschool etc – timewise it would be almost impossible and completly exhausting without.

    One thing I wish they would improve in Japan is the range of e-bikes and other assist vehicles in Japan. I was in NZ over christmas and people were riding electric scooters and skateboards, and the pedal assist bikes were big and powerful and could ride offroad easily. It would be great if Japan could add more things like these and be less strict on licenses for electric scooters etc because that kind of thing deters a lot of people (myself included).

  4. You could make your own yogurt. Find a store bought one, no sugar or fruit, that you like (we use LG21), heat milk, add a bit of the store bought for a starter and incubate. Once it sets, let it go until it’s as tart as you like. We like ours at three hours.

    1. Ah, but the Savas thing isn’t really yoghurt. It’s a protein supplement ^-^

      My wife makes her own yoghurt. Seems pretty easy to do.

  5. We are technically level 3 but I am too thrifty to ignore travel bargains and definitely too cheap to stay at top hotels where the rates start at €1900 a night. So maybe level 2.5?
    We also didn’t suspect that we were reasonably wealthy until we reached our mid-50s and then found out in our early 60s that we had greatly underestimated how much we had saved. Life had simply been too busy to work it out.
    We also take miraculos daily, mostly twice. It’s truly the best medicine!

  6. So health and fitness…?

    “Call any vegetable, and the chances are good
    …the vegetable will respond to you.”

    (showing my age)

  7. Ben, Thanks so much (and so late) for the kind words and link to my blog. Your consistency and content are amazing!

    1. Hey, great to have you here Derek. I’ve missed your content on Twitter, but managed to console myself with your blog. Hope you got some new readers from RJ!