By Dako I have never paid a single yen into Japan’s pension system. Not one month. My working life has been American, my Social Security record has been building for years, and next to it sits a Japanese-shaped blank that…
By Dako We have a bank account in Japan that earns nothing, owes nothing, and exists to pay for train tickets and dinners when we’re back. It’s in my name because Japanese banks don’t do joint accounts. Money goes in…
By Dako Somewhere in the back of my head, for years, lived a comforting sentence: there’s a tax treaty, so we’ll be fine. Move to Japan, split our lives across two countries, whatever. The treaty would catch us. Recently I…
By Dako The dual-base dream has a specific shape in our house: cherry blossoms and my parents’ kitchen for part of the year, our life in the US for the rest. Somewhere along the way of imagining it, the unromantic…
By Dako Nobody loses a brokerage account at the border. That’s the fear that brings people to this question, so let’s retire it in the first paragraph: moving to Japan does not freeze, confiscate, or erase your US accounts. What…
By Dako Our portfolio is boring on purpose. US-listed ETFs, a handful of individual US stocks, and almost nothing else. No NISA. No Japanese funds. That looks strange for a half-Japanese household, and the reason sounds paranoid until I walk…