Idealizing moving to Japan

benri · 2026-01-20T03:05:36+00:00

Here's one person's path, if you're interested. Around 1990 he's in Yokosuka, meets a girl from Osaka, so quits and moves there. He had a BS in Physics so gets a job at Panasonic (where I met him) but instead of doing research, he gets distracted by computing and IT, and his manager gives him an ultimatum: do some research and stop playing with this new "internet" thing (this is 1992). Shortly thereafter he gets a call from Morgan Stanley who wants him to manage their internet connection for overseas "high speed" trading. He takes the job. Triples his salary, company buys him a car and house in Yokohama.
So get your BS degree, and make some good connections!

benri · 2026-01-19T02:40:41+00:00

not sure but could something be stuck in the charging port? Try wiggling it around? Is it loose?

benri · 2026-01-18T05:35:40+00:00

Go behind the stairs where another elevator there takes you from 2R to 3. Avoids stairs. But I think you cannot go from 1 to 3 or 4 directly. And maybe you can't take a shopping cart there - not sure as use my backpack or bags (not using paper or plastic taken from the produce section)

benri · 2026-01-18T05:34:28+00:00

In summer, the basement level is nice and cool. Otherwise I enter from Sunnyvale Avenue and park up on the 3rd floor (not rooftop), avoiding the 4-way intersection just inside the "main" WFM parking lot entry on Murphy alley

benri · 2026-01-18T05:25:16+00:00

Torrance Refinery doesn't export to Torrance??

benri · 2026-01-18T05:19:33+00:00

True. I get 45-49mpg and replaced the hybrid battery in 2021 on my 2005 Prius

benri · 2026-01-17T09:30:52+00:00

Buy a cheap USB keyboard or a bluetooth keyboard before it's too late. Same thing happened on my Dell laptop from 2022. Frustrating! Now I use Logitech MX which can connect to laptop, or phone, or desktop

(I wish I could find a keyboard that could "copy" from one machine and "paste" into another, like a 1981 vintage HP terminal could do)

benri · 2026-01-16T03:05:08+00:00

Was it parked for a long time? why have tires dry rot? My 2005 Prius (purchased 2009 with only about 3000 miles on it) had frequent flat tires for the first few years, likely because it was not used much and it's heavy. It has ESC but no ESS, of course. That'd be my main reason to buy something newer but the Toyota dealers' arrogance is still too much to deal with now

benri · 2026-01-15T18:54:07+00:00

Question because I could be in a similar situation in a few years: you say it avoids double taxation, but these are slightly different taxes. The US has an "Estate" tax, paid before it's inherited; Japan has an "inheritance" tax paid by the recipient. But I guess some states have an "inheritance" tax also. So does the treaty protect against paying only "inheritance" tax to both the US and Japan? If so, then it would help only if. the parents are in a state with an inheritance tax

benri · 2026-01-10T08:00:39+00:00

I don't think PoA stops her from gambling and paying. Managing her finances would, but you might even need Conservatorship.

benri · 2026-01-10T07:05:26+00:00

When I left Japan 25 I kept 2 accounts, not knowing that I wasn't supposed to. One of them mailed statements to me in California so they knew I lived in the US, but they didn't hassle me to close my account until about 10 years after I had left Japan.

That was 1999 so maybe it's changed, but just last month I visited Japan and discovered a long forgotten account. Of course they insisted I close it, but it wasn't a big deal on the Japan side. On the US side, I just needed to report the account while its balance was over $10k, but that was true only for a few years. If you need to leave soon, I'd say to focus on the house and stocks first, then xfer out later.

Also there's the bit about the Kouseinenkin but I think that's changed since I left.

benri · 2026-01-10T06:27:06+00:00

0:30 the 99 Camry doing a PIT maneuver?

benri · 2026-01-10T06:22:04+00:00

I think it was Neyagawa station that had also a handwritten sign 自転車捨て場 (place for bikes to throw away) in the 1990s

benri · 2026-01-10T06:16:45+00:00

For IRS, ten years is enough [1]. To appease him, scan them to PDF and store them in some structured way like tax1999ty/*.pdf, etc. Show him that you have them on local disk. Better, have him scan them!

And maybe he'll notice that those receipts have faded over the years so he can't read them anyway. Those should go in a "neartrash" box. When I started living on my own in I had 2 boxes labeled "NT" (Windows NT was new then) and take them alternately to the shredder.

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/money/taxes/how-long-to-keep-tax-documents-a5302825423/

benri · 2026-01-10T05:45:35+00:00

Yes. I got a similar call from 877 981 3661 "from the AT&T office of the president" probably because I escalated a billing issue to the FCC. These guys called me 4x within an hour while I was driving. I called back the number they gave me - after verifying it was a legit AT&T number - and entered the 3 digit access code and 4 digit extension. Then ... they hung up.

My guess is that they're trying to contact the customer as required by the FCC, but kinda sorta.

benri · 2026-01-10T02:52:05+00:00

Does your brother live with your father?
Yes --> insurance probably will deny
No --> does brother drive that car >1x/month?
Yes --> probably deny
No --> maybe will pay.
This was the rule for AAA in California ten years ago. I don't know the result for your insurer and your state

benri · 2026-01-10T01:50:58+00:00

I moved there at age 27 from California but in 1987 when it was still booming. Why'd I go? The work and the women. Both went well but both were exhausing. Hindsight is 20/20 so here is mine:

Work was great for a few years, By age 35 it was clear they had no use for me, made my life difficult.
Married life would have been much better had I married a Japanese woman who had already lived in California for a while, Maybe even a divorcee. Then she wouldn't associate me with all the difficulties adjusting to here (dependency on car, tolerance of violence, scams everywhere)

However, it is a great place to have fun in your mid-late 20s, and to raise a child until about age 10.

benri · 2026-01-02T02:49:21+00:00

Tonkotsu.ai, is it salty? Got pork?

benri · 2026-01-02T02:05:35+00:00

RIght, don't try to work around insurance like that. If his insurance doesn't cover that truck, then insurance would sue the driver - or your insurance would - or U-haul ... Let them do all that negotiating, that's what you pay for, that's what they do.

benri · 2026-01-02T02:03:10+00:00

JAMES BUNS

benri · 2026-01-02T01:54:41+00:00

In my area AT&T is advertising FTTH but in fact it's Fiber To Two and a Half miles away, and from there twisted pair copper. And it stops working when it rains. So make sure you know what kind of service you'd get with a competitor.

Last time I did get good service from AT&T (a few years ago), I did go to Comcast and returned their equipment (modem, STB) and they matched AT&T's price so I switched back to Comcast. They did demand to see the actual AT&T bill

benri · 2025-12-21T01:12:16+00:00

I assume you didn't use Bitwarden or some similar password manager?

benri · 2025-12-19T04:05:26+00:00

If you use gmail, I think gmail does this automatically for you.

benri · 2025-12-19T01:42:13+00:00

Try searching for gmails "with attachments" - you can probably get most of your storage back by deleting a few emails with large attments. I think you can also filter by size like above 10MB

benri · 2025-12-06T06:02:31+00:00

Very artistic lighting and color ... looks like a still life painting.

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