The Monday Read: More and more

Medical hijinks and a scam artist

I had more new interesting medical experiences this week (just some tests, nothing serious) which I may write up on the blog in the future.

And my wife received a call from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare informing her that she was suspected of buying illegal drugs in May last year. Presumably there was some complicated scam involved, but she passed the phone to me and the guy hung up.

Be careful out there! Scams seem to be getting more and more common in Japan unfortunately.

RetireJapan TV S3E03

The next RJTV episode will be on January 20th, same bat-time, same bat-channel (from 20:00 on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn).

Join us live to ask questions, join in the discussion, or just hang out while we talk about personal finance, investing, retirement, and life in Japan.

YouTube

Thank you for your support of the RetireJapan YouTube channel.

We published a video about working on your finances in 2025.

The Forum

Speaking of which, the Forum is doing well (39,473 posts so far). The forum rules are here. In essence, they are:

1. Be nice
2. Ask any question you like
3. Only answer questions when you have relevant knowledge or experience

Here are the latest active threads:

This week’s books

I had a bit of time this week waiting around in hospitals, so I jumped back into Terry Pratchett’s wonderful Discworld series. Think I am going to reread all of them now 🙂

Unseen Academicals and Snuff, two of the later books in the series.

This week’s links

1. Sounds like I should just commute to Tokyo from Sendai! Domestic Business Travelers Priced out of Expensive Tokyo Hotels
2. Interesting: Thoughts from the Consumer Electronics Show
3. This guy again. He should just let it go, but he can’t. This has ruined his life: Man told he can’t recover £598m of Bitcoin from tip
4. I really don’t like Mizuho: Japanese Banks Raise Fees for Domestic Wire Transfers
5. Thinking about risk: Self Defense
6. Ruh-roh: Disaster-hardened Japan faces enormous costs from climate change
7. I don’t think I could take being in Japanese prison. Sounds horrendous: Media watch: Former justice minister gets firsthand look at prison life—as an inmate
8. A bit waffly this one: Tokyo drift: what happens when a city stops being the future?
9. This is a worry. Japan probably needs to do this too: Nobel prize winners call for urgent ‘moonshot’ effort to avert global hunger catastrophe
10. Ominous: How America Lost Control of the Bird Flu, Setting the Stage for Another Pandemic
11. I need to do more to prepare for this kind of thing: Four Questions
12. This was great: 12 Things That Probably Won’t Happen in 2025
13. Not just money, but also time: Spend To Live, Save To Die
14. Internalise these three things: 3 Improvements for 2025
15. Cruel and unusual punishment, I would call this: Ghosn accomplice calls for inmates to be treated humanely in Japan
16. Love this: The highway that Seoul turned into a stream
17. Good to think about: What If Stocks Only Rise 3%?
18. This is really good: Memo to the future
19. What does this look like in Japan: The New Housing Market Premium

What do you think? Anything interesting in there?

If you enjoyed today’s Monday Read and want to contribute to our costs, you could buy me a coffee (more like some web hosting, amirite?). All donations much appreciated.

The Monday Read, going out to more than 2,950 subscribers each week. Please share this post/email with friends/colleagues who may be interested in it.

If you were forwarded the email you can sign up to our weekly or monthly list here.

Or you can subscribe through WordPress below if you want to get each post the moment it is published:

Check out the RetireJapan website for more information, the Forum for discussions about personal finance and investing in Japan, and our coaching page if you need more help.