The Monday Read: The load lifts

You don’t know how heavy your boots are until you take them off

I’ve been sick for a couple of weeks now.

Caught some kind of cold at the tail end of being in Shikoku, then had a sore throat, mild cough, and general achiness/listlessness for a couple of weeks. It hurt to swallow, and my wife said my throat had lots of little white dots on it when she peered down it with a torch.

The morning of the day I decided to go to the doctor I woke up feeling better (figures).

The white dots were gone and I felt incredible. Still not 100%, but the aches were gone and I felt like I had energy and motivation and everything was just a little bit better.

It’s incredible how much difference something like being sick, or being in debt, or not having enough money makes. You don’t realise how heavy the burden is until it is lifted.

It’s like taking your ski boots off after walking around in them for a while. You feel like you are floating.

What’s holding you down at the moment?

YouTube

Thank you for your support of the RetireJapan YouTube channel. Made a short overview about the weak yen and how it might affect our planning.

Have you made any changes due to the weak yen?

The RetireJapan Guide to NISA 2024 edition

Will be published on June 30th. If you have bought a previous version of the Guide, you will receive a complimentary copy of the new edition when it is released.

If you haven’t bought the Guide to NISA yet, and would like a copy, the half price presale only runs until it is published.

If you buy the 2024 version you will also get free copies of new editions when they are released.

Please tell your friends and colleagues about this. The Guide will never be this cheap again.

The Forum

The Forum is doing well (35,986 posts so far). The forum rules are here. In essense, 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

No new books this week. Trying to finish some old ones.

This week’s gadget

As part of my process for turning into a really boring gym bro type, I have been drinking a lot of protein shakes.

So far I mainly just had protein powder mixed with water (and recently also creatine monohydrate and aojiru powder) and while that was kind of boring I had gotten used to them and grew to almost like them.

But then 7-11 came out with their frozen fruit smoothie things and my eyes were opened.

I bought some Nutribullet blender thing from Costco, but it was too small and broke within a week so I got one of these from Amazon instead.

It’s wonderful. Who knew adding frozen raspberries to your protein powder and water could transform them into a source of delight?

This week’s links

1. Completely agree with this statement. I think this law is extremely dangerous given how vague it is and that the immigration office rather than courts will be making these decisions: Lawyer, foreign nationals denounce Japan bill on permanent residence revocation
2. Counter intuitive but makes sense: The surprising truth: children likely increase your wealth
3. Being used to Sendai, prices in Tokyo blow my mind. This sounds like musical chairs though: Future shock
4. Be careful out there: How heat kills: What happens to the body in extreme temperatures
5. Hello darkness my old friend: Japan marks first ‘extremely hot day’ of 2024
6. Interesting to see this about the Tokyo Subway in the FT (search for the article title if you get stuck in the paywall): Why an 89p metro ride is a recipe for ideological conflict
7. I’ve seen this a couple of times: Japan’s beloved ‘Doctor Yellow’ track-testing bullet train to retire
8. Looking forward to more content from Martin: All-time highs!
9. Some decent reasons NOT to buy an Akiya (YouTube): やっと話せます
10. Really interesting stuff: Myth: Japanese Are Only Good At Incremental Innovation
11. This is something I want to work on: Learning to Slow Down Time
12. And I was shocked and saddened to read this from Jonathan Clements (I’m a fan): The C Word

What do you think? Anything interesting in there?

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