Environment on Nanikore

Tax, Alcohol and Radiation?

Fri, 24 Jan 2014 14:13:10 +0000

It’s a new year, so in a fit of preparation, I decided to go and make sure my tax links were all correct before next month when I sit down, watch Black Books Series 1, Episode 1, then figure out how much money I owe the Japanese government.

My first stop for this is always The National Tax Agency website. The English page may look a little 1998-esque, but importantly:

There is an English page;
It provides a link to the English language summary guide for filling in your tax forms ( 2013 .pdf here, if you’re interested).

I might write this up next month when I do the taxes, but I have to say that doing your own taxes isn’t so bad. It’s easier than some other things here for sure, and the people involved are actually usually very helpful.

Back to my original point. I was looking around the page and much of it is quite dry, with very dull sounding links like, " Commissioner’s Directive on the Mutual Agreement Procedures (Administrative Guidelines)", and " Australia, Canada, Japan and the United States issue internal guidance to improve the Mutual Agreement Procedure and Bilateral Advance Pricing Arrangement processes". Thrilling stuff.

Then, you find links like, “The results of Sake Awards”. I have no idea where that fits on any governments tax pages, but there is a very decent page outlining the winners out of various sake (rice wine) breweries in their pursuit of excellence.

However, the winner of the “Links I Don’t Expect to Find on a Government Tax Page” award goes to:

The results of radiation examination of alcoholic beverages (Last updated on January. 9)

For the purpose of providing consumers with safe and good quality alcoholic beverages, the NTA conducts radioactive examination for alcoholic beverages including those for exports.

So basically, the tax men and women of Japan have managed to get a gig where they have to spend lots of time with alcohol in order to … er … test for radiation safety. And to ensure good quality! The health and foods ministries must be upset they missed out on that job, especially since they seem to have issued the testing guidelines.

Yes, this post is very tongue in cheek.

Solio saves!

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 12:43:02 +0000

One little gadget I got last month was a Solio. Basically, it’s made of three solar panels connected to a rechargeable battery. It’s multi purpose really - either charge the battery from the sun, and then via connectors, charge up a mobile device (e.g. iPod, Palm, GameBoy Advance etc.), or run whilst charging. if there’s no sun, you can charge the Solio from a wall and just use it as an extra battery.

It ships with the iPod connector, but there are quite a few more. I’ve just send off for the mini-USB one to charge my Palm 72 with. I’m waiting for one to work on the PSP and/or the DS Lite too.

You can order it from their website, or from a few major retailers - here in Japan Bic and Yodobashi allegedly carry it, but I went into Bic’s main shop in Yurakucho here in Tokyo and the only one they had was in a small glass case near the stairs - and not the main stairs either. The Japanese press release we showed to staff was met with weird looks and “ask in the iPod area” responses. That said, if you go to Bic Camera’s website, you can order it easily from there, but it may be cheaper ordering it direct.

I have to say I really like it - not just because I like odd eco-friendly things, but because it’s really useful either for charging as you go, or as the bolt-on battery. worth a look.

Typhoon Tokage

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 01:10:19 +0000

It’s raining outside. Again. It seems to spend most of it’s time raining. Sorry to go on and on either about the weather or funky apps for your computer, but the fact is, it’s raining. This seems to be the small front end of the latest typhoon - [Tokage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Tokage_(2004%29). Tropical Storm Risk (based in the U.K. of all places) have a good plot of it’s estimated course here.

As I’ve mentioned before, this year seems to have been a very active year for typhoons, and I’m kind of hoping that this is the last one. Reuters have claimed that the storms have claimed 78 lives this year, mainly people by the coast. Let’s hope this one doesn’t take any more.