And while it’s tempting to switch to one of the endless new apps out there, there are good reasons to trust old tools.

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• While Leo was at swimming, I finished reading Digital Minimalism. There's too much (good) for me to say about it in this post. It certainly made me in the right frame of mind when reading technology is diminishing us (thanks Colin for the link), as  I was shaking my head in agreement the entire time.
  
  One of my main takeaways was to schedule on your calendar explicit time for  leisure. Too often we say we don't have time to do something, but we do, we just don't prepare for it. We often thing "great, I have an entire day to myself", then we don't plan what we're going to do, and end up just scrolling or binge watching one of the streaming services.
  
  The other  main idea was this leisure should be active. That doesn't mean it needs to be physical, reading literature is active as it requires you to think. While programming on Tanzawa technically fits the bill, I don't think it should count as active leisure as it's mostly the same as what I'm doing at work. Already this shift in mindset is helping me run more.
• Speaking of Tanzawa, I gave a tech talk about Tanzawa and the IndieWeb at work. Unfortunately, I forgot to click the record button, so only members of the team that were there that day / in Japan could see it. Preparing the talk made me realize just how far it's come in the past year and a bit...The good news is it encouraged one teammate to resume her site some more and another co-worker is interested in using Tanzawa itself :)
• There's this German beer chain that I'd been meaning to visit for the past 2.5 - 3 years, but you know, covid. I finally had a chance to go there for beers and sausage with a friend in Fujisawa. I also got to deliver some Marmite as a taste of home for my friend. He asked if I got a jar for myself to try it...but alas, I chickened out.
• The Yen hit a 24-year low against the dollar at ¥135 per dollar. We keep thinking about a trip back to the US so Leo can meet his grandparents, but with flights being around $6,000 and the exchange rate what it is, it would easily cost $10k just for a week or so back... Hopefully the exchange rate sorts itself out to more regular ¥105 - ¥110 per dollar rates. If it decides to dip to ¥75 per dollar (the rate after 3/11 when my parents were visiting us) while we're in the US, I wouldn't mind, either. 

• I spent most of this week recovering from jet lag, trying to get back into groove of regular life. After managing to go two weeks without catching the 'rona,  it's all finally caught up with me and I caught a small cold.
• I finally got around to doing my US taxes this year. Thankfully Americans abroad have a 2-month delayed due-date. Doing my taxes is always hugely stressful. Not because they're complicated, but because the software I was using (TurboTax) isn't designed for Americans abroad, you've got to do all of the conversions from JPY to USD yourself. Which also means finding/picking an exchange rate etc..
  
  This year I found and used ExpatFile.tax, and wow is it a breath of fresh air. I'm able to put in what I earned in JPY and it handles all of the conversions for me. It seems pretty intelligent about FEIE (Foreign Earned Income Exclusion – where the first $100k or so of income is tax free, but means you can't use tax advantaged things like Roth IRAs etc...) and the FTC (Foreign Tax Credit).
  
  I've always used FEIE because it's "easier". This year after reading their blog post Why the FTC is better than the FEIE, I was prepared to use FTC..and as a bonus there was a Covid child tax credit I'd be able to use if I did, so I'd actually get a $1000 return this go around. But alas, after inputting my wife's income (as she's still a tax resident), they suggested I use FEIE, as per usual. Maybe next year...I'm almost looking forward to doing them next year. Almost.
• This post on installing a payphone in your house brought back a lot of youthful memories and how often we used payphones back then. He installs a Pacific Bell phone, the same as I used, so it's hits all of the nostalgia points. Most of the time when I used payphones though, it was just me calling my dad collect and in the space for the name saying "DadI'mAtTheMallPickMeUp" as 2 second gap to say your name. Not Phreaking, but still workin' the system.
•  Digital Minimalism is proving to be a quick read and enjoyable read. I want to finish the book before I do the 30-day "detox", but the idea of being intentional about when and why we use technology is really resonating with me.
  
  Particularly about this idea that we let tools and services into our life because they promise some benefit: news,  and so forth. And while they do provide that benefit some of the time, most of the time we use it, it's just mindless usage and time sinks. The actual cost in time/attention for that little benefit is not in our favor.
  
  This really sounds like me and Twitter. Wake up, scroll to see what the other gaijin are up to in Japan, repeat. It's not focused and it's a huge time sink preventing me from doing things I'd actually like to be doing. Perhaps I can find a way to collect these people into a list and use my RSS reader to catch up on the gossip once a week?
• If it's not possible, that might even be a nice micro-service. Create a RSS feed that's updated weekly with the tweets (no replies?) of a handful of accounts. This way it acts as a firewall between you and social media.