How to use the corporate babysitter vouchers (ベビーシッター派遣事業割引券)?

All levels of the Japanese government have various programs to support people with kids. One of this, ベビーシッター派遣事業割引券, is a national program subsidizing baby sitters for working parents: companies can purchase baby sitter tickets and give it to their employees. My company is participating in this, and since it is a bit complicated to use, I’ll describe how to use it in this post.

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.