America has Warren Buffett, but Japan's most famous investor is 71-year-old Kiritani, who has a portfolio of over 500 stocks totaling over 400 million yen. He does not own a car and rides around everywhere in his bicycle. He's also known for his love of shareholder perks. /1

And then my five year old looked up to me and said, “Daddy, why do so many Japanese people hate gaijins? Why do they tell you to go back to Canada to be a vocalist when you’re contributing so much by renovating an abandoned house?” And then everyone clapped

America: $40 borger Russia: literal plague France: on fire Samoa subplot:

Incredibly based I’ll also point out that the coolest Japanese people in just about every workplace are often the boomer janitors

Never count out tobacco stocks. $PM outperforming S&P 500 over the past 5 years

I’m never quitting this app

How I use this app: days where I tweet nothing, and then days where I tweet a dozen times in a row like I’m a possessed autistic gaijin demon

BASED

I’ll also point out that an interesting thing you always see in Japan is large numbers of old people working. While it’s partly out of necessity, (can’t afford to retire etc), it’s also true that many Japanese people (esp older men) enjoy working and often lack social lives outside of work

This is an insane excerpt from the FT article lmao

People continually mention Japan’s large elderly population (nearly 30% of its population) and concern about a future pension crisis and then you have France where the elderly population makes up a smaller percentage and yet pensioners are outearning working adults

The Nikkei is up 35% this year and yet it’s still below its all time high. Incredible times we’re in

This is an incredible tweet

"Cool Japan" started to take off when I was in high school in the 2000s but Japanese stuff then was basically still just anime stuff, J-pop, video games and for nerds and weirdos who hanged out at Hot Topic at the local shopping mall. One aspect of all the overtourism in Japan now from Westerners of all types (old, young, fat, nerd, hipster, yuppie, etc) is that now seemingly *anything* Japanese is cool and in demand. Rise of K-pop also has boosted the soft power of East Asia as a brand.

Permabears watching everyone celebrate as the stock market hits new all-time highs despite 25-year high bond yields

Visited Chatan, Okinawa a few years ago and the American military presence is everywhere. U.S. military helicopters fly regularly over the local beach, yellow school buses filled with American kids drive the local roads, and there’s also literally a local shopping center called “American village” where Americans hang out and English is widely spoken

In first grade, all the whites and blacks at school were laughing at me when my Japanese mom packed me onigiri for lunch. "CTC is eating rice and leaves for lunch!" After that, I came to school with a power rangers lunch box and a ham and cheese sandwhich. There weren't many asians (and defintely no Japanese) living in Maryland in the early 1990s.

Japan school lunches being terrible is a classic Reddit meme but I’ve been continually impressed with the quality of Japanese school lunches as a parent. In Osaka, elementary school lunches are now free and my kid, who is a picky eater, is always happy to eat the school lunches. I like that the lunches are well balanced but also have good variety. Honestly a lot of school lunches in America (pizza? Junk food? Crackers?) would likely look like child abuse to many Japanese parents

Plenty of Redditors like to dream about buying an Akiya and living some “peaceful life”in rural Japan, but then you have stories like these. Rural Japan can be an isolating place and even many young Japanese people leave rural areas for the city. Rural Japan can be good for the right person, but just know what you’re signing up for if you make the move

Haven’t watched market news so closely as of late. End of the day, I’m pretty content to just sit on my tobacco and boomer stonk positions and just collect dividends, wait, and do nothing