The Monday Read: A traveller in a now foreign land
Everything is expensive and nothing works I’m in Europe at the moment. We had a week in London, then a week in northern Spain. My wife and me, and two of our grandkids. It’s been great. I don’t usually enjoy visiting the UK, aside from seeing my friends, but this time was different. I think […]
The Monday Read: Summer Days
Conan, what is best in life? I’m off to London and northern Spain tomorrow with my wife and two of the grandkids. Don’t have much planned, we’re going to slow travel our way through the British capital and then go and stay with relatives in Plentzia where I spent my childhood summers. It’s all part […]
The Monday Read: A cool and pleasant summer?
Losing weight seems to have an unexpected benefit This year’s summer for some reason has seemed incredibly mild and pleasant. My wife assures me it is not so different to last year, but I haven’t felt unpleasantly hot at all so far. My best guess is that this is because I have lost a lot […]
The Monday Read: Rainy Days Ahead
But not for me 🙂 Seems like the rainy season just hit Sendai, after one of the most pleasant Junes I can remember. It’s been wonderful: sunny days with low humidity and a pleasant breeze, day after day after day. I wish every year was like this. But today we’ve had rain all day, with […]
The Monday Read: Starting to feel like summer
Enjoying all seasons There is a bible verse I really like (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). It’s the ‘there is a time for everything’ one. I’m not in the slightest bit religious, but I do appreciate a good bit of writing. And that one has a lot of wisdom packed into a few lines. From the benefit of […]
The Monday Read: Back to Work
For everything a season This Golden Week has been wonderful. We’re kind of used to them now, so we planned things in order to completely avoid crowds. And it worked: Stayed at some cabins run by a town near Sendai on the evening of the 29th (next day was not holiday, so it turned out […]
GUEST POST: Easily filing your taxes in Japan as a freelancer or small business
Today’s guest post is for people who might need help filing their taxes: freelancers, small business owners, etc. Robert runs a service helping people learn to use software to do this easily and reduce the time and stress involved with filing taxes. Personally I also need to get better at this kind of thing, so […]
The Monday Read: Full-time work and RetireJapan
There are only so many hours in the day Had my first week of full-time employment, and I drastically underestimated how exhausting and time-consuming that would be. Despite my best intentions, I was not able to publish a new blog post, nor upload a new YouTube video. Now, some of that was due to the […]
Understanding price and value
Possibly the most important aspect of personal finance Price and value are at the heart of money and personal finance. Money is a store of value, and value is subjective Each person is going to have a different perception of value. How much are things worth to you? How much value you get from a […]
The Monday Read: It’s okay to take time off too
Sometimes the best thing we can do is recover I have been much more active recently. That is largely a good thing, but today I hit a wall. I went to jiu-jitsu practice on Friday and Saturday, then went snowboarding today on Sunday. It was too much. I felt exhausted, with no energy. I pushed […]