RetireJapan

We bought our house “as seen” when the selling party didn’t want any responsibility for defects after signing. This is how all transactions for used homes work in the UK so it didn’t bother me but apparently it’s a bit unusual here. I used it to knock another 5 million off the price so turned out o...

Dear Yamede, I agree with what other posters are advising you, i.e. that the JA bank NISA does not seem like a good deal. The three names- Rakuten, Monex, SBI - mentioned here are probably better bets. If you open a SBI Shinsei account, and use it to then open a Monex account you can get some extra ...

Dear Moneymatters,
Many thanks, - your reference looks very much like it will shorten my list of questions.
Best wishes!

There are plenty of sites, books, and even magazines for property buyers in Japanese. I don't know of any in English. Have a vague plan to write a RetireJapan Guide to buying your home in Japan eventually, but I'm not sure when that will be Hi Ben, Thanks for the reply - yes, it was the sort of int...

Dear All, I was thinking of posting this in the RetireJapan for Dummies section, or as a separate post in the Real Estate section, but since my position is somewhat similar to that of Tsumitate Wrestler I thought I may as well put it here. I just wanted to ask whether anyone can recommend a website ...

Before looking at investment choices, you might want to first consider whether it is a good idea to invest (directly) for your children at all. I did put some money into Junior ISAs , but I think now that it was maybe not the best decision to do so. This youtube video explains some of the issues, al...

Aside from questions such as. WTF are retirees doing to their kitchens? British people in general seem to spend a lot of time and money on their homes. All of my relatives are always replacing something or decorating a room or spending cash on the garden. Japanese, on the other hand, seem content t...

Lots of sensible advice here. Just to add a few things: This is why I nearly always cycle on the road, and not on the pavement! Where I live the pavements are wide enough so that most cyclists opt to use them, which has the advantage of taking all the cyclists (and of course pedestrians) off the roa...

I have used air miles a few times for flights with various airlines (Cathay, JAL, Korean Air). As has been pointed out you still have to pay (using cash) for the taxes and carrier imposed surcharge, so you will have to compare all these things when looking for the best deal (i.e. some airlines will ...

Many thanks to Retirejapan and sutebayashi, Apologies for the slight delay in responding, but I have been able to verify that no tax declaration is required - which is obviously a very nice feature of such a tokutei account. In case it might help, for those of you who are interested in checking your...