How-tos

An interesting query came to Lifelines from LS, a reader in the United States who was born in Tokyo and lived here until her teens. She writes: I received vaccination shots as a baby and child through the Japanese hospital. I no longer have my ...

After I had spent over a year working at a Japanese bank in Tokyo, I felt like something was wrong but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I knew I was doing a good job, and my work was going smoothly, but ...

Ben Tanaka wanted to take more control over his finances and launched RetireJapan.com to share what he has learned.

Emperor Akihito will be facing a lot of changes to his routine when he retires this week, but presumably the Imperial Household Agency will take care of all the details of his retirement planning. The rest of us, however, are on our own. That means ...

What if you were doing something that drove your Japanese colleagues crazy, but you didn't realize it? Conducting seminars for Japanese businesspeople who work with people from other countries, I found a common theme that comes up every time I ask what behaviors of ...

Putting together the slide deck for the presentation had become a never-ending ordeal for Dave. Every time he turned a draft in to his Japanese boss, it would come back with yet another set of things to correct. "How many times do I have to ...

Earthquakes are an ever-present danger in Japan so it is important to be thoroughly prepared in the eventuality that one strikes. Although many areas in Japan publish comprehensive guides in English and other languages — see "Tokyo Bousai" ("Disaster Preparedness Tokyo") published by the ...

When I graduated from college and went to work for a consulting firm in Chicago, for the first week I was asked to sit next to someone who had worked there for a couple of years in the same role, who methodically took me ...