Welcome to The Monday Read, RetireJapan’s weekly collection of content, musings, and links related to personal finance and life in Japan.
I’m in Miyakojima for a couple of weeks. It’s pretty good down here. I first visited in June, but liked it enough to book a second trip in October!
Primary goal was for my granddaughter to get her PADI Open Water diving license (success!). Secondary goal was for me to get back into diving after an eleven year gap (success). I have a rescue diver certification from PADI, but was pretty rusty until this week. Seems to be coming back quite quickly.
And the tertiary goal is to finish the 2024 Guide to NISA (in progress).
There will probably be slightly less RetireJapan content for the rest of October. My apologies. Normal service will resume in November 🙂
YouTube
Thank you for your support of the RetireJapan YouTube channel. We published a new video this week, an online lecture I did recently for beginners. I hope you enjoy it!
Personal Finance in Japan: Principles for Beginners
Please watch, share, like, and subscribe 🙂
The Forum
The Forum is doing well (30,241 posts so far). Here are the latest active threads:
This week’s books
No new books this week: I’m still reading Jack Reacher novels and working on the new Guide to NISA.
This week’s links
- This is everywhere in Japan now due to the shortage of cheap labour: ‘Skimpflation’: An even sneakier form of shrinkflation
- Much like personal finance, I don’t need to be as rich as possible (having enough is plenty). I don’t need to look amazing, just be healthy enough: Don’t Just Look at the Results
- I knew all seven of these, plus the fact that plans are useless (but planning is priceless): 7 Things You Probably Don’t Know About The 4% Retirement Withdrawal Rule
- This proposal is really stupid. Helping parents who abandon or neglect their children is a laudable aim, confusing everyone by claiming perfectly normal and healthy behaviour is ‘child abuse’ is very unhelpful… 小３までの子の自宅・車放置は「虐待」として禁止…埼玉県が条例改正案、反対議員「親を追い詰める」 and “子ども放置禁止”条例案 埼玉県に反対意見871件 賛成2件 … aaand, how it’s going: Saitama to withdraw proposed ban on leaving children unattended
- Can’t come too soon: Japan to tackle hay fever by felling cedar forests near major cities
- This is a wonderful interview (YouTube): How to Be Happy, Reverse Bucket Lists, The Four False Idols, and More — Arthur C. Brooks
- We are… inevitable: Number of foreign residents in Japan rises to record 3.2 million
- Seven out of eight, but most of them are mental shifts: 8 Signs You’ve Jumped From Middle Class to Wealthy
What do you think? Anything interesting in there?
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Did you see anything interesting while you were scuba diving?
Lots of sea snakes!
#1 We found skimpflation in sushi at the supermarket. We only buy it there very occasionally, when we return in the evening from a trip to my husband’s hometown. They stopped putting wasabi on the nigiri and including soy sauce packets, but I think the prices are the same. Sigh.
#2 – besides steroids/the juice and a trainer and diet, there is also some hook-pocus that can be done photographically, or cinematographically (if that’s a word). The right lighting (angles, color temperature), angles for that, can make a big difference. Body make-up is also a factor. It’s the job of everyone on set to make sure the actors look pumped, bad-ass, sexy/seductive, and so on.
#7 – It would be nice if we knew that what is being called ‘permanent residents’ there is what most people call PR, or 永住権. But it sounds like that’s anything but the other visa categories they mention (could it be intended as permanent tax resident?). And ‘spouse’ is not mentioned, so is that being lumped in with the above permanent resident? And, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a number, but of the million or so zainichi, about half still have the ‘special permanent resident’ status (have not naturalized), and in addition to spouse visa holders, this is another group that got lost in the reporting.