Smart lighting options in Japan

We are in the process of building our house, and I want to use this opportunity to add some smart home solutions. Right now my focus is on ensuring that the things that come with the house are capable of “being smart” (controlled with automation). Big part of this is lighting, and in this post I’ll review what I learned about smart lighting options available in Japan.

A low-effort way of getting paid well

I work in IT, which generally means great salaries, but there is still a difference between companies. Moreover changing jobs leads to higher compensation on average, as one is in a better negotiation position when joining a company compared to when simply asking for a raise.

However constantly looking for jobs and interviewing requires substantial efforts, so I have a more passive approach to it.

Newborn baby paperwork in Tokyo

We recently had a baby in Tokyo, and in this post I’ll share our experience with the required paperwork (mostly in chronological order).

Our situation for reference:

• my wife is Japanese, thus our baby is also Japanese, so the baby doesn’t need residence card and visa
• we live in Tokyo, and some of these programs are provided by the Tokyo prefecture (but other prefecture might have similar programs)
• I work for a Japanese company as a fulltime employee (会社員), and they provides my health insurance

What to check before buying a land in Tokyo

We are currently at the final steps of buying a land in Tokyo, so in this post I’ll share the information we checked when considering a given land. In an earlier post I looked at comparing the data on cities of Tokyo, which gives a good high level view, while this post will look at data-sources that are useful when looking at a specific land.

Comparing cities to live in: Musashino vs Mitaka vs Koganei

We decided to build our own house in Tokyo. We narrowed down our area to the following stations on the Chuo line: Mitaka (Mitaka City), Musashi-sakai (Musashino City), Musashi-Koganei (Koganei City). We also considered Kichijoji, but it was way out of budget (also it gets very crowded on weekends), and Higashi-Koganei (the station between Musashi-sakai and Musashi-Koganei), but currently it lacks the shops and amenities that we got used to. It is being actively developed, so it might get there in the next 5-10 years, but it’s also between two pretty well developed stations, so chain stores might pass on opening their stores there (e.g. both neighboring stations have Ito-Yokado shopping malls, making it unlikely that there would be one in Higashi-Koganei in the future).

Choosing where to live is one of the truly life-altering decisions, especially for our children (as it affects which school they go to, their friends and also influences their career). While big part of this can’t be foreseen, I decided to take a look at the data available to compare these cities. I believe the same data is published for most cities in Japan, so even if you are looking at other places, this post might be able to help you make your own comparison.