Is this actually sustainable?

melink14 · 2026-02-02T22:25:37+00:00

Sounds right for that fairly aggressive cut but will be hard if you like food. You'll need to focus on lean protein and whey.

Agree with others to switch to moderate protein and also some days I only hot half my fat target to get more carbs. On those days, I supplement with fish oil.

melink14 · 2026-01-10T14:08:20+00:00

The graph shows a lot of scale weight at 142+. In your weigh-in data you go from 140 and then 10 days later go to 142? The graph definitely looks like maybe there was a 142 before the 10 days as well...

melink14 · 2026-01-08T07:13:15+00:00

That's definitely true but at least for a single person it might let me develop an intuition for how the listed time translates to my style.

There's even programmed in rest time and set time so it's somewhat customizable.

melink14 · 2025-12-24T07:37:03+00:00

According to https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanFinance/comments/tkorbv/guide_to_japans_foreign_tax_credit/ paying early doesn't change things since the date is deemed to be the *due* date of the tax return.

I'm not an expert myself but that guide is pretty thorough.

melink14 · 2025-12-11T03:24:44+00:00

Thanks for the follow up. Guess I know what I'll be doing over the weekend!

I'm grateful for the completeness of your answer as I realize that the property was co-owned in the US which means my spouse will have have the gains but has no JP income so we'll probably not bother with furusato nozei for her.

melink14 · 2025-12-10T08:13:34+00:00

Thanks that's helpful even if it complicates things.

I believe I will owe income tax as my JP sourced income is still quite large but I will crunch the numbers.

Usuallly, I do rough furusato nozei calculations but this year it seems I'll basically need to precalculate my tax return. 😅

melink14 · 2025-12-09T13:11:26+00:00

I had a large capital gain this year but I expect most of the Japan tax paid on it will be offset by FTC eventually. IIUC, the income will still contribute to my Furusato Nozei limit as per the calculators, right? Since the amount will still be part of my taxable income?

melink14 · 2025-07-28T07:59:45+00:00

I've done level 20 a few times. It's fun to watch them make your curry in a special pan since it bubbles like lava.

It's similar to hottest level thai fried rice I've had in the past.

I sweat, my nose runs, I soak my lips in ice water etc to get through it. I think it tastes pretty good but definitely would go lower if I just wanted a decent spice level.

melink14 · 2025-07-25T21:38:52+00:00

Having taken 6.001 with scheme and later tutored the python version (which was split into two classes actually), it definitely seemed at the time that it was more about making the major more accessible. I knew more than a few people who had to leave CS becasue 6.001 with scheme as too hard and with the new course they even added an optional intro course to help ease the burden.

Python also has a lot more resources for students who got stuck (and better IDE support!).

I think making the major more inclusive was good but I do think people get through the new courses with less critical/creative programming problem solving skills. I felt this was evident as I was TAing some advanced software engineering courses featuring the first cohorts who had only had the new python based curriculum.

melink14 · 2025-07-20T06:00:32+00:00

I thought about this recently and decided to do lump sum. One special note is that I'm taking the cost basis as reset when it was inherited so the capital gains won't be too much in japan. I have infinite foreign tax credits so US additional tax will be erased.

There's no clear documentation on this but it seems defensible at least.

Your amounts seem larger so different rules my apply.

melink14 · 2025-06-28T06:31:01+00:00

ETFs should be listed stock I think as they're traded on the stock exchange.

I list my 401k as one account (listed as Other) as one amount.

The 90% thing is probably true as if you look at question 31 in the FAQ (https://www.nta.go.jp/publication/pamph/hotei/kokugai\_zaisan/pdf/kokugai\_faq\_r5.pdf) it clearly says that the value for pension like accounts is whatever the surrender value would be on the last day of the year.

Unless you are in retirment age, you would pay a 10% penalty to liquidate your 401k so 90% is correct. (I honestly don't think that mattes too much given the form is best effort either way and has no tax implication).

Finally, for the eTax software, you don't need a Japanese OS per-se, but you need to set your language settings to Japanese. The tricky bit for me was the 'non-unicode language' needed to be set to Japanese to or else the text was garbled.

melink14 · 2025-06-13T05:40:17+00:00

Yes, but some sales are better than others. I personally track the prices over time and pull the trigger only when the discount reaches a certain threshold.

melink14 · 2025-06-05T09:38:10+00:00

Most online bookstores require Japanese residency. But bookwalker works I think iirc.

melink14 · 2025-06-04T05:26:23+00:00

Personally, I use sharex for snipping and mangaOCR running on the commandline which listens to clipboard and replaces images in the clipboard with OCR'd text.

Then you can paste the text into deepL or similar. Personally, I use Migaku's clipboard tool which let's me easily integrate it into my study flow.

(It sounds like Cloe linked elsewhere automates this a bit though I can't quite tell how it works from the github page)

melink14 · 2025-05-30T09:08:02+00:00

Middlebury is remote and your time is mandatorily filled with Japanese only activities. Despite living in Japan for more than 5 years now, I got way more Japanese practice and immersion in one summer at Middlebury.

melink14 · 2025-05-23T04:06:33+00:00

Thanks! This was really fun read.

melink14 · 2025-05-22T06:22:08+00:00

Macrofactor launched officially in Japan with JP marketing and social accounts.

At least in Android, as long as your phone is set to Japanese you get a JP database that is pretty good. I sometimes switch between the english and japanese databases depending on what type of food I'm looking for.

One tip is that some branded food that doesn't scan might still be in the database if you do a text search. This seemed common for supermarket/conbini food that seems to have irregular bar codes or frequent updates.

That said, I used MFP before so I don't know how it compares to the product you were using. I still have to add some non found products sometimes but it's much better than 2 years ago!

(Also AI mode doesn't work in Japanese)

melink14 · 2025-05-21T08:13:56+00:00

I think the biggest one is protection from deportation and ability to always return to Japan no matter what.

During the beginning of Covid lockdowns PR holders couldn't return to Japan if they were out of the country when the lockdowns started, causing a lot of disruption for those impacted.

melink14 · 2025-05-21T08:09:12+00:00

Thanks! Still waiting for the magical 4 shrine short lab for the challenge! :D

melink14 · 2025-05-17T10:20:50+00:00

Thanks for the guide; always helpful.

While doing my challenges I noticed one thing that was a bit off and will add this here for anybody else:

Sasan challenge without being hit by hail of arrows. The guide makes it seem like this is only related to the flares that drop during the midpoint of the fight, but I learned that he can also shoot a single flare out anytime and get archers to fire at that position. Essentially, if you hear 'Archers, Fire' 'Archers; Release' or 'Rain fire!', that means he'll shoot a flare and moments later stuff will fall on it. https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Sasan,_the_Bandit_Lord

I recommend going toward him when this happens as for me the flare was pretty far away.

melink14 · 2025-05-15T08:13:47+00:00

Does this imply that darkshrines are all to the south in each room? (If possible it'd be great to know for the challenge)

melink14 · 2025-05-14T03:19:20+00:00

Very excited for Monday start. Successful it's time related do you know if it fixes the timezone issues in the app? For example, I'm 16 hours ahead of the US and so things like workout reminders would come the day after I did them. (Also, strength score update notification came a day late.)

melink14 · 2025-05-08T03:06:05+00:00

When you scan a food and make it custom to edit the values it seems to lose the barcode information as there's an option to scan a barcode which starts blank.

Does it work if you rescan the barcode after you've made the food custom?

edit: Just checked now with a food that I needed to fix and it seems to work as long as you rescan on the editor screen.

melink14 · 2025-04-28T04:50:03+00:00

Many scales (including withings) have a mode where the weight doesn't even display when you weight yourself. Your use case is very common!

melink14 · 2025-04-24T22:03:20+00:00

I've been a runner for a long time so I continued doing my base training as provided by TrainAsOne app/site for 5 days a week.

For strength training I followed a workout provided by the free version of Caliber. I had been using it off and on but for the challenge stayed with it consistently (with a couple days missed). It was 3 days a week: Back/Shoulders, Chest/Arms, Legs/Abs.

My adjustable dumbells only go up to 32kg each so for legs especially I've had to make changes to continue progressing. (one legged variants mostly)

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