The Monday Read: Blue Skies
Living a deliberate life I went snowboarding today for the first time this season. We had great weather for it and the resort was playing upbeat jazz music instead of the usual ’80s pop tunes. A big improvement. At first I wasn’t thrilled about going, but my wife wanted to so I duly got up […]
2024 Planning
Happy New Year! I hope the year of the dragon treats you well. I also hope our readers in Hokuriku are safe and doing okay and can get back to normal as quickly as possible. I know from personal experience how draining recovering from an earthquake can be. Take the time you need to adjust […]
The Monday Read: Noticing
Welcome to The Monday Read, RetireJapan’s weekly collection of content, musings, and links related to personal finance and life in Japan. I’ve been really impressed with my phone camera recently. Found this crab on the path on my way to work the other day and took a quick pic, but the quality is unreal. Funnily […]
The Monday Read: Finding Treasure
Welcome to The Monday Read, RetireJapan’s weekly collection of content, musings, and links related to personal finance and life in Japan. That dragonfly was just sitting on the fence when I got to work. I guess it was too hot for dragonflies as well as humans that day. Recently I find myself stopping to take […]
The Monday Read: Borrowing Nice Things
Welcome to The Monday Read, RetireJapan’s weekly collection of content, musings, and links related to personal finance and life in Japan. Last week I needed to drive somewhere and my wife was using her car. There is a Toyota Rentacar just down the street, so I booked a car through them. You get a slight […]
The Monday Read: Health and Fitness Edition
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). […]
The Monday Read: Sakura
The cherry blossoms hit Sendai a few weeks early this year, but they are looking great. Had some wonderful weather this weekend although I only managed to grab a few minutes to enjoy them. It’s been BUSY, so much so that I missed both my goals this week and paid the penalty (see below). Will […]
The Monday Read: Mantras
I was idly thinking about mantras the other day in the shower, and came up with the following that have served me well: Realising that I choose to do most of the things I do makes it easier to do them, knowing what is important to me and what isn’t let’s me use my time […]
The Monday Read: Ball is Rolling
My financial incentive habit creating system is working well (see below). I went to jiu-jitsu three times this week, even though I am still slightly injured and very busy with work. There is no way I would have gone without the public commitment and financial penalty. Today I got on my rowing machine for the […]
The Monday Read: Life-changing books
A life-changing book is not a term to throw around lightly. I feel like I might have read one this week (details below). Other life-changing books include Your Money or Your Life, one of the first personal finance books I read, and one that might have had the largest effect. Another was Minako Takekawa’s iDeCo […]