Using e-Tax from a non-supported browser

Japan’s online tax filing system, e-Tax, only supports a handful of operating systems and browsers:

• Windows 10 or 11 with either Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome
• MacOS 12-15 with Safari

(Moreover officially the operating system has to be set to Japanese, though I don’t think they check this one.)

Calculating and declaring capital gains tax in Japan

Last year I sold some ETFs in my Interactive Brokers account, which doesn’t withhold taxes in Japan, so I had to report it in my tax return (確定申告) and pay tax on it. In this post I’ll share how I went about this.

This is not tax advice, and it might be incorrect/incomplete or simply doesn’t apply to your situation. Do your own research and do not follow this blindly.

Odelic Connected Lighting

We are building a house, and I recently looked into smart lighting and light switches concluding that the best option for us was likely Panasonic’s Advance Series Link Plus, which later I did a deep-dive on. Then I took a look at Koizumi’s TRee system, and now to finish up my investigation into Japanese smart lighting systems, I will share what I learned about Odelic’s Connected Lighting.

TRee: Koizumi's smart light system

We are building a house, and I recently looked into smart lighting and light switches concluding that the best option for us was likely Panasonic’s Advance Series Link Plus, which later I did a deep-dive on. Then we started looking at the actual lights to see what fits with our design, and found Panasonic’s offerings underwhelming. This made us look at other manufacturers, namely Koizumi and Odelic. They both have smart lights, so I will share what I learned about each, started with Koizumi.

On investment risk

This is something that I have been trying to wrap my head around for a while: people say that the global stock market returns around 5% yearly (on top of inflation, based on the last 100 year), but it’s still risky and the risk is the volatility: the stock returns change a lot year over year, but on the long run they average out. But if the returns average out, then as long as I don’t check my portfolio daily and make bad decisions on short-term swings, I should be fine, right? If yes, then where is the risk? And in general how is volatility the same as risk?