NoFakie

Tia Maria - get it together! I tried looking for that ad on Youtubes once but it wasn't to be found. di Maria is a fantastic player, and should be one of the best in the whole league, but where does he play in a 3-5-2? There is already no place for Januzaj. With Evans out, the spectre of Carrick at center half is already looming large. With Shaw out and the Butt away, there is no left back either.

Britain's are crap. My folks have a sorry dribble of an electric shower and a carpet. Given how fast a UK kettle can boil a large amount of water, its surprising how piss poor the showers are. The other new one in the UK is having three or four crap bathrooms in a house in the form of ensuites. Often the result is three or four tiny bedrooms with no storage. Come to think of it, Japan may indeed do bathing better than anyone else. No water shortages, geographically blessed with hot springs, established social manners, not freaked by nudity and communal bathing, all those kind of reason

It was a one-off as Mork. It might have been a pilot for Mork and Mindy, or the series may have come later, I don't know. I thought he was very funny a lot of the time in Mork and Mindy and as a standup. I haven't seen many of his movies. My brother had the Good Morning Vietnam soundtrack where a few tracks are just him talking, and they stand up to multiple listenings. Depression seems pretty common among comedians, and its sad to lose another to it.

Pards has just come out and said Newcastle's target this year is 48 points, i.e., fewer points than last season where we played with relegation form for the last 15 games. :doh: :doh:

From a "how good is Van Gaal?" perspective, the fewer players they sign, the better! But yeah, no new center half in spite of all that money sitting in the bank, the dude all set to pay a three center-half formation, and two center halves having just left. Makes you wonder what is going on.

For a spouse in Japan, the exemption is 160 million yen, which is over 900,000 pounds (for a UK domicile spouse its unlimited, but that's not the case we've been talking about). UK inheritance tax is also nearly 40% as soon as you start paying it. I don't think the Japanese one starts anything like as high as that. I also get the impression that houses are not given high valuations for taxation purposes in Japan. Certainly not market value. Houses are the main issue with inheritance taxes for ordinary folks in the UK.

I reckon assets in Japan will be subject to Japanese inheritance tax regardless of whether gaijin or Japanese own them, and regardless of who lives where. Although you may have heard Japanese people moan about them as if they are the worst thing ever, Japanese inheritance taxes are not high by global standards. Most Japanese taxes aren't. The government just prints all its money instead. I think the issue here is whether a foreign government will also get some inheritance tax on such Japan-based assets. It sounds like the UK government won't if you aren't domiciled here, though that might

Thanks for the info! I had another look but the six or seven articles I saw about UK expats all focused on domicile, not the passport. This first one describes some of the evidence used to judge domicile http://www.yourexpat...-tax-expats.htm The following article has some info about non UK-dom spouses, who get an extra allowance. So it would be 325000 times two anyway. By electing to become UK domiciled, a spouse can become completely exempt by the sounds, although that sets off a time bomb for when he/she dies. http://www.turcancon...married-couples I know very little abo

This is the first hit I got when I looked but it suggests UK inheritance tax liability is based on domicile. From what it says, you don't get to choose where you have a UK domicile and instead its based on tests like whether you own a house or have permanent residency in the other country. If you don't have a UK domicile, you are not liable for UK inheritance tax on non UK assets. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/expat-money/9883829/Inheritance-tax-u-turn-expats-must-plan-ahead.html This info may be wrong, of course. If you get it checked out, please let us know what

Thank you sir! It's pension basics, but anyone with savings, investments when they hit retirement can live on some combination of 1. the return/interest on such savings, investments and 2. using up the savings, investments themselves (referred to as draw down, withdrawal etc.) To live on return/interest alone, you need a much much bigger pile. If your pile is in a Japanese bank, the interest on eleventy billion yen will get you one kara-age teishoku a year! Most people do not need to die with their savings intact, so its normal to use at least some of them up. It then becomes a

Any photos of the converted barn? And more pies, of course

The traditional advice is that you can take 4% a year, so that would be 40 grand or 4 million yen a year. Given that the assumption will be that you own your own home, 330,000 yen a month with no housing cost will pay for a lot of fun! Of course Shinzo has promised to deliver on the long awaited inflation, so that 330,000 a month may only pay for a packet of bean sprouts. Provided they're in season.

I wonder how many people with a 1 million dollar portfolios have to google retirement advice anyway. I would be too busy going to restaurants and planning holidays!

Just a note for anyone heading to Hokkaido that Skymark said today that they'll probably shut down all of their operations at Narita in October this year. It might be easier to get a good connection to Hokkaido from Haneda or to fly to Sapporo via an Asian hub.

Getting back to retirement but a lot of articles out there it seem to start with "so if your portfolio is worth $1 million...." :lol:

Some light reading for Scouser (and everyone else) before the season starts!

For curry fans in Japan, this palak paneer for 180 yen in most big supermarkets is really good! It's just like a restaurant curry. Add some jasmine rice from Costco and you have a well yummy lunch for almost zero effort and the price of two onigiri.

There are abuses regarding arranged and brokered marriages, but you can easily avoid such problems by not issuing spouse visas to newly weds. I reckon the government just wants to appear to be "tough on immigration" and these rules are some ham-fisted attempt at it. However, the rules affect ordinary people and keeping families apart is no laughing matter.

Yeah, some medical looking scissors that weren't very sharp, so there was a bit of hacking involved. In general, many general hospitals in Japan won't let the father in the delivery room at all or will at least have a glass screen. Our kids were born at a maternity clinic, which on the whole is a much better experience. They are places for mothers, not sick people of both sexes and all ages like a hospital. Among maternity clinics, the amount of participation and services varies, and I doubt many places with let you hold your missus' leg up in the air when the kid is coming out. I was a gr

Less than a week to the Charity Shield and a fortnight to the season proper. Wahey!

I think I'm probably okay with the sight of blood and guts. The clinic where my missus had the kids were well into participation so I got right in on the action. I cut the cord on all three of them and the midwives seemed keen on me checking out the afterbirth. The placenta and fair bit of blood sitting there in a bowl. Smells, such as puke, can start me off though. I love soups, but the smell of boiling chicken bones gets to me too. The same with some kinds of fish.

The only dry ski slope I've been to is the one by B&Q in Aberdeen. It's not far from the city center. It had some rails and probably big enough for 7s jumps on it for kids who don't mind the odd friction burn or two.

Apparently this was challenged in court but they lost the ruling a couple of weeks ago. http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/jul/11/appeal-court-18600-foreign-spouse-uk The comments to the article make it sound like the "live in the EU for three months" loophole (the Surinder Singh case?) has also been closed or is now much harder to use. Some of the personal stories about people's circumstances in the comments also sound well grim. fwiw, foreign spouses are already ineligible for benefits, so stopping them coming won't save any money. The other crazy one is that an EU national can

They used to sell the Sapporo can with the pull off top in the Hacienda. It was one of the very few non-cars or electronics Japanese things I saw before coming to Japan. Along with Star Fleet, Monkey, and this, of course.

I think that Sapporo is brewed under licence in Europe. I first saw that can back in the late eighties. I dunno if it still does, but the ring pull would pull off the entire top of the can, giving you effectively a pint glass. You can get the Scandi flavoured ciders at Ikea in Japan, but they're a bit too alcopop for me.