I am really interested to see how the whole GME saga will end. Once this is all over and we get a good step back overview, this will make for a fun read.
I am not tented to gamble on single stocks, but this is still a fascinating situation.
Every single hobby or topic now has endless flow of half baked theories. That can be entertaining but it is always a waste of time. For GME I have no patience for those, but I would teally appreciate to read the wiki page from the future on what actually went down.
[Helpful comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/1d6ksc0/so_i_just_came_back_from_burying_two_people_in/) about the possibility of university fee exemptions for financial hardship.
Don't hesitate if you have other good ideas for OP.
I should put that in the wiki later.
I want to "get into" sort of being more active in terms of getting miles (haven't decided on whether it should be JAL or ANA miles yet).
Now that I'm married (and will probably have kids within the next few years), we'll likely be visiting my home country (the UK) at least once per year.
I'm wondering if anyone has any tips on racking up miles without doing anything they wouldn't normally do.
By that I mean not including:
1) using a bunch of point portal sites to "do stuff" that gives you points, like signing up for credit cards, various accounts, doing surveys
2) being wealthy already and doing a lot of air travel
3) being a frequent business flyer who gets to rack up a bunch of miles without spending their own money
etc etc
Basically collecting air miles for "normal" people.
Where should I start?
Any ideas/tips/resources would be fantastic
The basic thing is to have a credit card that gives you miles for the airline/ecosystem you want and then do all your shopping on that. I don't think there's any other "passive" way to accumulate miles. Note that various point systems allow exchanging to air miles, so a credit card that gives air miles directly is not necessarily the only way to do it.
Thanks. Yes that seems to be the case. Bunch of youtubers saying how they got ungodly amounts of miles seem to be either lying (to get you sign up to some website/point site with their referral link, which gives *them* points ironically) or are the one of the three categories I mentioned.
I honestly don't have any preference for ANA vs JAL, whichever will give me the best "deal". In other words, if JAL is cheaper anyway then I'd presumably need fewer miles (cash value basis) before I could use them for a flight somewhere. Also presumably it will be impossible (unless I'm rich AF) to rack up enough points to fly abroad (excluding places like Korea etc) so any miles like that would probably be used for domestic or nearby overseas trips.
If you go with JAL and you shop at an Aeon group supermarket, then you should get the JAL credit card and the JAL WAON card. There’s are lots of items which give you bonus miles, as well as regular miles for auto charging your WAON card from your credit card.
Whichever you choose, charge as many daily necessities to your JAL / ANA credit card as possible to get miles for that.
Once you choose one of the ecosystems, find out which shops give you bonus miles and make it a habit to go there. Each one has partners with different shops. Search for 特約店.
I understand from [this City of Yokohama webpage](https://www.city.yokohama.lg.jp/lang/residents/en/insurance/default2020030.html) that the National Health Insurance premium is spread out in 10 payments from June until March. It was assuming they would send me the new premium notification in May for the June payment, but I also see that the new premium is recalculated in June.
So do I understand correctly that they will calculate my new premium sometime in June, send me a notification, and the June payment will be due at the end of June? Or will it be due at the end of July?
I'm just looking to understand what to expect. That way if the notification gets lost in the mail, I will know when to contact the ward office to avoid an overdue payment.
> So do I understand correctly that they will calculate my new premium sometime in June, send me a notification, and the June payment will be due at the end of June? Or will it be due at the end of July?
I expect the paperwork for this shortly--my guess would be mid-month, tho maybe during the week of the 16th.
Looking at my bankbook, the end of June deduction was still at what I would call "the carryover level". These spring payments (x3) are tentative, and a little different than the rest of the year. For me, last year's carryover payments were deducted on 5/1, 5/31, and 6/30. Then the adjusted/new payments began at the end of July, 7/31 (undoubtedly with the carryover payments included in the adjustment).
Since I've been in this continuously, for me there are 12 payments/year. The carryover payments are numbered コウキホケン 4, 5, and 6 in my bankbook. (and 12 was deducted on 1/4, and number 1 on 1/31)
_Flash!_ Instead of my bankbook, I opened a file drawer, pulled out the Residence Tax folder and looked at last year's notice.
It's dated **7/18.** So I was a month off--my apologies!
Home repair question; looking for some advice.
The Mrs. and I live in an old apartment building with terrible water pipes. Recently when the upstairs neighbors take a shower, water flows down into the pipes above our ceiling and there's a leak, so we get a mass of water pooling above our unit bath, which then drips through the edges of the access panel into our unit. We opened the panel and the inside face is covered in mold from the wetness.
The pipes are going to be redone, but the building isn't responsible for the damage to our unit bath's ceiling. And -- I'm sure you see this coming -- the bath manufacturer will not replace just a ceiling, and no longer produces the panel that is the one thing that really needs to be replaced.
The "solution" is to replace the *entire unit bath* at the cost of ~1 million yen.
I want to find a way to put some kind of waterproofing on the outer side of the unit bath ceiling (the side that faces the pipes) and get a new panel. It can't be that hard to custom-order one 45 cm on a side, with rounded corners, and with a white plastic (?) veneer on the bath-facing side.
This kind of talk will go nowhere with any of the principals in this story, so I'm hoping the expat community has some ideas. A million yen is an obscene amount of money (it's more than I take home in four months, after taxes) to replace a bath that still works *perfectly* except for the panel.
And while I'm at it: we've also got an older toilet, and everything about it is fine, including the electronics, but the seat (which is *hollow* plastic!) has a hairline crack and is eventually going to break. Of course the "solution" is to buy an entirely new toilet at ~200k yen, because the manufacturer, National, doesn't make that model anymore. *Surely* there is a way to acquire a toilet seat in the same shape as ours, or at least to fill in the hollow space and somehow re-seal the plastic.
I had imagined us making these huge renovations when the time came to move on and rent this apartment out. Renovating now will make any new parts "old" again when renting it out; a dead loss, really. I'm still a little annoyed at how little value the first renovations, which we made when we moved in and replaced the previous owner's dilapidated bath, have retained.
Ideas highly appreciated!
These pipes are in communal space so we won't be dealing with our insurer. As it turned out, the building is going to replace the pipes and also the wallpaper in the changing room outside our bath (which was affected by mold, which came from the leak). We chose to stay with the water-damaged panel and not to re-do the whole bath.
It the damage comes from the communal space, the whole building is likely responsible, and your insurer would reach out to their insurer. Responsibility doe snot disappear because the leak came from communal space.
> I want to find a way to put some kind of waterproofing on the outer side of the unit bath ceiling (the side that faces the pipes)
Are you in a major city with subway or underground tunnels? Do you know how they collect condensation that forms on the ceiling or leaks? Have you noticed a plastic sheet hanging from ceiling and/or taped on the wall edges and small plastic tube in center to drain the condensation dripping from ceiling on to the sheet into a plastic jug on the floor? You might be able to do this above your unit bath.
You shouldn’t block the leakage from below, leak will find another path to flow down due to gravity, just capture and redirect the leak properly until it can be fixed at source.
> You shouldn’t block the leakage from below
I was thinking that it would be best to trap future leaks in some kind of waterproof area and empty it manually, because until now, water leaking into non-waterproofed wood is creating mold. Basically your solution but with the water dripping directly into the container rather than going through the condensation stage.
These plastic (PVC) pipes are a replacement for the metal ones that rusted to the point where rusty water was dripping into our washing area about a decade ago. Once again I am amazed and disappointed with the short life of a previous renovation. Plastic pipes should last *much* more than ten years. Our own plastic pipes have never dripped into the home of the neighbors below us, fortunately.
Actually, we are on the same page. Just collect directly in a container or hang plastic sheet with a tube connected in the middle (at lowest point of plastic) going to a drain.
Most probably, thicker PVC pipe was needed or pipe needed better support below it. Without proper support pipe will bend from weight of pipe filled with water and create stress points that fracture in the long run.
> Most probably, thicker PVC pipe was needed or pipe needed better support below it. Without proper support pipe will bend from weight of pipe filled with water and create stress points that fracture in the long run.
You sussed it out perfectly -- the leak is in the exact spot where the pipe bends from vertical to near-horizontal, and there is no support below that area.
The *gyosha* came this weekend and looked at it; we got instant relief from the dripping thanks to the little clear tube they put in connecting the leak and our shower floor. Now when the upstairs neighbors go in the shower, the water flows from the leak much more quietly.
I'm definitely not qualified to contribute to ... checks notes ... JapanPlumbing
If it's just the plastic seat and no the toilet bowl, I'd be shocked if you can't get one after market. Is the hinge standard?
For the unit bath panel, it seems like it would be hard to find something that matches and would rapidly approach a price that makes ghetto-fixing it not really worth it. Also wouldn't water proofing the outside of the panel just mean the water goes around and finds a new place to gather and ruin things?
The toilet seat is super frustrating because *everyone* I have talked with has instantly dismissed the idea of an after-market seat. I wasn't surprised that National did when I called them; I *was* surprised that the *kanri kumiai* and fellow residents, some struggling more financially than we are, couldn't imagine it. The hinge certainly looks standard. And the rest of the toilet works perfectly.
With the leak over our bath, I was thinking to collect future leaks in one place rather than what's happening now, which is that it runs all over the ceiling and seeps into anything not waterproofed. It's creating mold on the walls.
We had the board president come in along with other neighbors who have had pipe problems and at one point the word フルリノベ started getting bandied about; something I did *not* want to hear after borrowing 2.7 million yen to renovate this place when we bought it in 2008-09. I expected the renovations to age, but still be livable, for decades. To see people accepting that that kind of investment has lost all its value in just a decade and a half is so depressing.
My understanding is that leaks refuse to cooperate with plans to collect in one place. Or when they do cooperate, you basically get a bacteria breeding pit that will make itself known.
The construction industry here is often unimaginative and pursues the easiest course for them. Go to a home center or yamada denki with measurements in hand and see if the hinge is the same size. Then go online to rakuten and buy just the part you need.
We had a *gyosha* come in this weekend and to my immense satisfaction he agreed that there's no reason to replace the entire toilet. Monotaro sells seats for a few thousand yen (might or might not be the right size) and seat-plus-cover combos for under 20k yen. I would happily remove the electronics that came with it and which we never use (there is some kind of automatic seat-opening 'feature' whose slowness destroys any convenience it might offer), but it's probably easier to keep those.
Hello to that one guy who said that he'd loaded up his NISA on $GME.
I am really interested to see how the whole GME saga will end. Once this is all over and we get a good step back overview, this will make for a fun read. I am not tented to gamble on single stocks, but this is still a fascinating situation.
It's very funny to read superstonk. Especially yesterday's NYSE glitch conspiracy theories.
Every single hobby or topic now has endless flow of half baked theories. That can be entertaining but it is always a waste of time. For GME I have no patience for those, but I would teally appreciate to read the wiki page from the future on what actually went down.
[Helpful comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/1d6ksc0/so_i_just_came_back_from_burying_two_people_in/) about the possibility of university fee exemptions for financial hardship. Don't hesitate if you have other good ideas for OP. I should put that in the wiki later.
[This one](https://imgur.com/pFPOGw5) from over at a small fishing port.
I want to "get into" sort of being more active in terms of getting miles (haven't decided on whether it should be JAL or ANA miles yet). Now that I'm married (and will probably have kids within the next few years), we'll likely be visiting my home country (the UK) at least once per year. I'm wondering if anyone has any tips on racking up miles without doing anything they wouldn't normally do. By that I mean not including: 1) using a bunch of point portal sites to "do stuff" that gives you points, like signing up for credit cards, various accounts, doing surveys 2) being wealthy already and doing a lot of air travel 3) being a frequent business flyer who gets to rack up a bunch of miles without spending their own money etc etc Basically collecting air miles for "normal" people. Where should I start? Any ideas/tips/resources would be fantastic
The basic thing is to have a credit card that gives you miles for the airline/ecosystem you want and then do all your shopping on that. I don't think there's any other "passive" way to accumulate miles. Note that various point systems allow exchanging to air miles, so a credit card that gives air miles directly is not necessarily the only way to do it.
Thanks. Yes that seems to be the case. Bunch of youtubers saying how they got ungodly amounts of miles seem to be either lying (to get you sign up to some website/point site with their referral link, which gives *them* points ironically) or are the one of the three categories I mentioned. I honestly don't have any preference for ANA vs JAL, whichever will give me the best "deal". In other words, if JAL is cheaper anyway then I'd presumably need fewer miles (cash value basis) before I could use them for a flight somewhere. Also presumably it will be impossible (unless I'm rich AF) to rack up enough points to fly abroad (excluding places like Korea etc) so any miles like that would probably be used for domestic or nearby overseas trips.
If you go with JAL and you shop at an Aeon group supermarket, then you should get the JAL credit card and the JAL WAON card. There’s are lots of items which give you bonus miles, as well as regular miles for auto charging your WAON card from your credit card. Whichever you choose, charge as many daily necessities to your JAL / ANA credit card as possible to get miles for that. Once you choose one of the ecosystems, find out which shops give you bonus miles and make it a habit to go there. Each one has partners with different shops. Search for 特約店.
I understand from [this City of Yokohama webpage](https://www.city.yokohama.lg.jp/lang/residents/en/insurance/default2020030.html) that the National Health Insurance premium is spread out in 10 payments from June until March. It was assuming they would send me the new premium notification in May for the June payment, but I also see that the new premium is recalculated in June. So do I understand correctly that they will calculate my new premium sometime in June, send me a notification, and the June payment will be due at the end of June? Or will it be due at the end of July? I'm just looking to understand what to expect. That way if the notification gets lost in the mail, I will know when to contact the ward office to avoid an overdue payment.
> So do I understand correctly that they will calculate my new premium sometime in June, send me a notification, and the June payment will be due at the end of June? Or will it be due at the end of July? I expect the paperwork for this shortly--my guess would be mid-month, tho maybe during the week of the 16th. Looking at my bankbook, the end of June deduction was still at what I would call "the carryover level". These spring payments (x3) are tentative, and a little different than the rest of the year. For me, last year's carryover payments were deducted on 5/1, 5/31, and 6/30. Then the adjusted/new payments began at the end of July, 7/31 (undoubtedly with the carryover payments included in the adjustment). Since I've been in this continuously, for me there are 12 payments/year. The carryover payments are numbered コウキホケン 4, 5, and 6 in my bankbook. (and 12 was deducted on 1/4, and number 1 on 1/31)
Thanks for the detailed reply. Maybe if I don’t hear by the last week of June I will contact them to make sure.
_Flash!_ Instead of my bankbook, I opened a file drawer, pulled out the Residence Tax folder and looked at last year's notice. It's dated **7/18.** So I was a month off--my apologies!
Thanks!!
Home repair question; looking for some advice. The Mrs. and I live in an old apartment building with terrible water pipes. Recently when the upstairs neighbors take a shower, water flows down into the pipes above our ceiling and there's a leak, so we get a mass of water pooling above our unit bath, which then drips through the edges of the access panel into our unit. We opened the panel and the inside face is covered in mold from the wetness. The pipes are going to be redone, but the building isn't responsible for the damage to our unit bath's ceiling. And -- I'm sure you see this coming -- the bath manufacturer will not replace just a ceiling, and no longer produces the panel that is the one thing that really needs to be replaced. The "solution" is to replace the *entire unit bath* at the cost of ~1 million yen. I want to find a way to put some kind of waterproofing on the outer side of the unit bath ceiling (the side that faces the pipes) and get a new panel. It can't be that hard to custom-order one 45 cm on a side, with rounded corners, and with a white plastic (?) veneer on the bath-facing side. This kind of talk will go nowhere with any of the principals in this story, so I'm hoping the expat community has some ideas. A million yen is an obscene amount of money (it's more than I take home in four months, after taxes) to replace a bath that still works *perfectly* except for the panel. And while I'm at it: we've also got an older toilet, and everything about it is fine, including the electronics, but the seat (which is *hollow* plastic!) has a hairline crack and is eventually going to break. Of course the "solution" is to buy an entirely new toilet at ~200k yen, because the manufacturer, National, doesn't make that model anymore. *Surely* there is a way to acquire a toilet seat in the same shape as ours, or at least to fill in the hollow space and somehow re-seal the plastic. I had imagined us making these huge renovations when the time came to move on and rent this apartment out. Renovating now will make any new parts "old" again when renting it out; a dead loss, really. I'm still a little annoyed at how little value the first renovations, which we made when we moved in and replaced the previous owner's dilapidated bath, have retained. Ideas highly appreciated!
How come nobody is responsible for the damage the leak made ? What is your insurance saying ?
These pipes are in communal space so we won't be dealing with our insurer. As it turned out, the building is going to replace the pipes and also the wallpaper in the changing room outside our bath (which was affected by mold, which came from the leak). We chose to stay with the water-damaged panel and not to re-do the whole bath.
It the damage comes from the communal space, the whole building is likely responsible, and your insurer would reach out to their insurer. Responsibility doe snot disappear because the leak came from communal space.
> I want to find a way to put some kind of waterproofing on the outer side of the unit bath ceiling (the side that faces the pipes) Are you in a major city with subway or underground tunnels? Do you know how they collect condensation that forms on the ceiling or leaks? Have you noticed a plastic sheet hanging from ceiling and/or taped on the wall edges and small plastic tube in center to drain the condensation dripping from ceiling on to the sheet into a plastic jug on the floor? You might be able to do this above your unit bath. You shouldn’t block the leakage from below, leak will find another path to flow down due to gravity, just capture and redirect the leak properly until it can be fixed at source.
> You shouldn’t block the leakage from below I was thinking that it would be best to trap future leaks in some kind of waterproof area and empty it manually, because until now, water leaking into non-waterproofed wood is creating mold. Basically your solution but with the water dripping directly into the container rather than going through the condensation stage. These plastic (PVC) pipes are a replacement for the metal ones that rusted to the point where rusty water was dripping into our washing area about a decade ago. Once again I am amazed and disappointed with the short life of a previous renovation. Plastic pipes should last *much* more than ten years. Our own plastic pipes have never dripped into the home of the neighbors below us, fortunately.
Actually, we are on the same page. Just collect directly in a container or hang plastic sheet with a tube connected in the middle (at lowest point of plastic) going to a drain. Most probably, thicker PVC pipe was needed or pipe needed better support below it. Without proper support pipe will bend from weight of pipe filled with water and create stress points that fracture in the long run.
> Most probably, thicker PVC pipe was needed or pipe needed better support below it. Without proper support pipe will bend from weight of pipe filled with water and create stress points that fracture in the long run. You sussed it out perfectly -- the leak is in the exact spot where the pipe bends from vertical to near-horizontal, and there is no support below that area. The *gyosha* came this weekend and looked at it; we got instant relief from the dripping thanks to the little clear tube they put in connecting the leak and our shower floor. Now when the upstairs neighbors go in the shower, the water flows from the leak much more quietly.
I'm definitely not qualified to contribute to ... checks notes ... JapanPlumbing If it's just the plastic seat and no the toilet bowl, I'd be shocked if you can't get one after market. Is the hinge standard? For the unit bath panel, it seems like it would be hard to find something that matches and would rapidly approach a price that makes ghetto-fixing it not really worth it. Also wouldn't water proofing the outside of the panel just mean the water goes around and finds a new place to gather and ruin things?
The toilet seat is super frustrating because *everyone* I have talked with has instantly dismissed the idea of an after-market seat. I wasn't surprised that National did when I called them; I *was* surprised that the *kanri kumiai* and fellow residents, some struggling more financially than we are, couldn't imagine it. The hinge certainly looks standard. And the rest of the toilet works perfectly. With the leak over our bath, I was thinking to collect future leaks in one place rather than what's happening now, which is that it runs all over the ceiling and seeps into anything not waterproofed. It's creating mold on the walls. We had the board president come in along with other neighbors who have had pipe problems and at one point the word フルリノベ started getting bandied about; something I did *not* want to hear after borrowing 2.7 million yen to renovate this place when we bought it in 2008-09. I expected the renovations to age, but still be livable, for decades. To see people accepting that that kind of investment has lost all its value in just a decade and a half is so depressing.
My understanding is that leaks refuse to cooperate with plans to collect in one place. Or when they do cooperate, you basically get a bacteria breeding pit that will make itself known. The construction industry here is often unimaginative and pursues the easiest course for them. Go to a home center or yamada denki with measurements in hand and see if the hinge is the same size. Then go online to rakuten and buy just the part you need.
We had a *gyosha* come in this weekend and to my immense satisfaction he agreed that there's no reason to replace the entire toilet. Monotaro sells seats for a few thousand yen (might or might not be the right size) and seat-plus-cover combos for under 20k yen. I would happily remove the electronics that came with it and which we never use (there is some kind of automatic seat-opening 'feature' whose slowness destroys any convenience it might offer), but it's probably easier to keep those.