Pension in Japan

I’m still pretty far from retirement, but recently I’ve been looking into how the pension works in Japan, so I’ll share my learnings in this post.

Family Finance Meeting

People with (good) financial advisors often have family meetings, where they discuss financial matters (income, spending, investments) with their immediate family (spouse, kids). This can be useful for people without financial advisors too, so we decided to start doing it. In this post I’ll describe why and how we are going about it.

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.