Articles

Your family back home probably doesn’t understand Japanese bureaucracy, Japanese geography, or Japanese.

They might not know what a ward office is or why it matters. They might not understand the difference between Chiba-shi and Chiba-ken. They might not know that your address is written backwards from what they’re used to.

They definitely don’t know which documents are required for what procedures, or how long things take, or why everything requires so much paperwork.

This creates problems if they need to be involved in handling your affairs, because they’ll be operating in a system they don’t understand, in a language they don’t speak, with cultural expectations they’re not familiar with.

But they’re still your family, and they still want to help and be involved in appropriate ways.

The key is setting realistic expectations and providing clear guidance about what they can help with and what they can’t.

They probably can’t navigate Japanese banking requirements, but they can handle your overseas assets. They probably can’t communicate with Japanese officials without help, but they can coordinate with family members back home. They probably can’t easily arrange a Japanese funeral, but they can plan a memorial service in your home country.

Make it clear what role you want them to play and what role you need your Japan-based contacts to play. Give them specific instructions about who to contact for what purpose.

And please, for everyone’s sake, make sure your emergency contacts actually answer their phones and speak enough English to communicate with your overseas family.

Nothing creates family drama faster than important people being unreachable during a crisis.

Living between cultures means navigating different expectations about everything, including death and family responsibilities.

In Japan, there are specific rituals and procedures that are considered normal and respectful. In your home country, there are different rituals and procedures that are considered normal and respectful. Sometimes these overlap, sometimes they don’t, and sometimes they conflict completely.

For example, Japanese funerals are typically Buddhist ceremonies with specific protocols about flowers, money gifts, and timing. Western funerals might be religious or secular, might involve burial or cremation, and have completely different expectations about family participation.

Your Japanese friends might expect certain things from your family. Your family might expect certain things from your Japanese friends. And you’re the bridge between these expectations, except if you’re not around to translate cultural differences, everyone’s going to be confused and possibly offended.

This isn’t just about funeral customs, either. It’s about decision-making processes, communication styles, and what different cultures consider appropriate during times of grief.

The solution isn’t to pick one culture over the other. The solution is to be explicit about what you want and to help both sides understand what to expect from each other.

Document your preferences clearly. Explain cultural differences to both families. Consider appointing cultural liaisons who can help navigate misunderstandings.

Because the last thing anyone needs during a difficult time is confusion about cultural expectations on top of everything else.

Nobody wants to talk about death planning. It’s worse than “the birds and the bees” talk.

My mother was brilliant at avoiding that conversation; she deflected attempts to ask her about her final wishes like it was Bullet Time. And then when we absolutely needed to know, it was too late for conversations and we’re left trying to figure out what she would have wanted.

No one wants to talk about your plan because it makes them imagine a world without you in it. You don’t want to bring it up because it feels morbid and depressing and like you’re tempting fate somehow.

So most families just don’t talk about it.

Here’s what I learned eventually: don’t make the conversation about death. Make it about being prepared.

Instead of “When I die, here’s what I want you to do,” try “I’m getting my affairs organized so you don’t have to worry about anything if there’s ever an emergency.”

Instead of “Here’s my will,” try “I want to make sure you know where to find important information if you ever need it.”

Instead of “Let’s plan my funeral,” try “I’ve been thinking about my preferences for end-of-life care, and I’d like you to know what they are.”

The conversation is the same, but the framing makes it less scary and more practical.

I can’t speak for my mother, but it seems most people are actually relieved to have these conversations once they start. The anticipation that’s worse than the reality.

And honestly, if a family can’t handle a calm, practical conversation about emergency preparedness, how are they going to handle an emergency?

October’s articles were all about digital assets – the stuff that lives on our phones and computers and in the cloud.

Key takeaways:

• Your digital life is probably more complex than you realize
• Passwords are the keys to everything, but they’re useless if no one else knows them
• Most tech companies have legacy features, but you have to set them up in advance
• A little digital decluttering makes everything more manageable

If digital organization feels overwhelming, start small. Pick one account – maybe your email or your bank – and make sure someone you trust can access it if necessary. Set up one legacy contact. Write down one important password.

Progress beats perfection every time.

November is going to focus on family harmony – how to have conversations about end-of-life planning without making everyone uncomfortable, and how to prevent conflicts before they start.

Because the goal isn’t just to get organized. The goal is to make things easier for the people you care about.

And that starts with communication.

If you’re ready to dive into cross-cultural organising for emergencies and end-of-life, buy The International Resident’s Ending Note PDF Bundle at https://mediatinker.com/product/ending-note-bundle/

Halloween is almost here. It may be the one time of the year when it’s socially acceptable to discuss things that make people uncomfortable.

Let’s talk about something actually scary: dying without leaving your passwords behind.

Here’s a ghost story for you. A man dies suddenly, leaving behind a laptop full of important financial documents, family photos, and business records. His family knows the information is there, but they can’t access it because the laptop is password protected.

They try every password they can think of. His birthday, his pet’s name, his anniversary, combinations of family names and important dates. Nothing works.

They take the computer to a tech repair shop. The technician explains that modern encryption makes it essentially impossible to crack the password without destroying the data.

The family is left with a laptop full of important information that might as well not exist, because they can’t get to it.

This isn’t a made-up story. This happens all the time.

The scariest part? It’s completely preventable. A password manager, a written record of important passwords, or digital legacy features would solve the problem entirely.

But you have to set these things up before you need them. You can’t call tech support from beyond the grave.

So this Halloween, do something that will prevent your digital life from haunting your family: set up a password manager, designate digital legacy contacts, or at least write down your most important passwords somewhere safe, like the Ending Note.

It’s less scary than most Halloween movies, and much more useful.

Most major tech companies now have some kind of digital legacy feature, but hardly anyone uses them because hardly anyone knows they exist.

Google calls theirs “Inactive Account Manager.” You can set it up so that if you don’t log into your Google account for a specified period (3, 6, 12, or 18 months), Google will automatically give access to trusted contacts you’ve designated in advance.

Apple has “Digital Legacy” for iCloud accounts. You can add up to five legacy contacts who can request access to your account after you die (they’ll need to provide a death certificate).

Facebook lets you designate a “legacy contact” who can manage your memorialized account.

Microsoft has a “next of kin” process for Outlook and other accounts.

These features exist because tech companies realized that digital assets are real assets that families need to access. But they don’t activate automatically – you have to set them up while you’re alive and able to manage your accounts.

The process usually involves:

1. Identifying trusted contacts
2. Providing their contact information
3. Deciding what level of access they should have
4. Making sure they know they’ve been designated

It’s not complicated, but it does require a few minutes of setup for each service. And you have to remember to update your legacy contacts if your relationships change.

But once it’s set up, your family will have official, legitimate ways to access your accounts when they need to. No guessing passwords, no calling customer service, no hiring lawyers.

Just proper access through proper channels.

I challenge you to spend 30 minutes this week (how about today?) cleaning up your digital life.

Not for estate planning reasons, but just for your own sanity.

Here’s what 30 minutes can accomplish:

• Delete apps you don’t use from your phone
• Unsubscribe from email lists that clutter your inbox
• Cancel one subscription service you forgot you were paying for
• Organize your desktop or downloads folder
• Update your password for one important account
• Set up two-factor authentication for one service that doesn’t have it yet

Pick one or two things from that list. Don’t try to do everything at once, because then you’ll do nothing at once. If you get inspired and you want to do more than one session, go for it throughout the week.

The goal isn’t to become perfectly organized in 30 minutes. As if! The goal is to make your digital life a little bit more manageable.

Plus, every subscription you cancel is money back in your pocket. Every app you delete is space back on your phone. Every password you update is better security for your accounts.

Small improvements add up over time. And when you document your digital assets for estate planning purposes, you’ll be starting from a cleaner, more organized baseline.

Think of it as digital hygiene. Just like you brush your teeth regularly to prevent bigger problems later, you clean up your digital life regularly to prevent bigger headaches later.

Boring but effective.

If you’re like most people, they’re scattered across multiple platforms. Lots are on your phone(s). Some are backed up to iCloud or Google Photos or posted on Flickr. Some got shared on social media. Some are on your computer. Some are on that old laptop in your closet that you really should do something about.

Your photos are probably one of the most important things to your family, but they’re also one of the hardest things to access without your passwords and account information.

This isn’t just about preserving memories (though that’s important). It’s about making sure your family can find the photos they want for memorial services, for sharing with relatives, and for their own comfort.

I know someone whose father was a photographer who had thousands of photos stored across multiple cloud services and external hard drives. When he died, the family tried to piece together his digital archive. Some photos were duplicated across multiple services. Some were organized, some weren’t. Some were backed up, some existed only in one place. In other words, their dad was like us.

They eventually recovered most of the photos, but it took a lot of time and technical knowledge that not everyone has.

The solution isn’t to consolidate everything into one service because that’s likely to be a nightmare amount of work. I often have good intentions of culling or organising my decades of digital photos but I only get so far before I give up. It’s so much effort.

The easiest (and therefore best) solution is to document where your photos are stored and how to access them.

Go the extra mile and include any special instructions about organization or backup systems. If you have a particular photo organization system, explain it. If there are photos that are especially important, note where they are.

Your family will have enough to deal with. Don’t make them play digital detective to find your memories.

I went through my credit card statements looking for recurring charges. Want to know what I found?

• Amazon Prime (in regular use)
• Spotify (also in regular use)
• Zoom (not as regular these days, maybe I can downgrade)
• Adobe Creative Suite (so expensive, but necessary)
• A meditation app I wanted for my yoga class (but didn’t like)
• A streaming theatre service I wanted to watch over the holidays in 2024 (then completely ignored from January)
• Cloud storage I signed up for temporarily and forgot about (oops)
• A language app with a “free trial” that turned into a monthly charge (urgh!)
• Some software that I needed for one client project a long while back (completely unexpected because I though I’d cancelled it)

This is normal, by the way. Most of us sign up for things with good intentions, use them for a while, then forget about them. The services keep charging us because that’s how subscription models work. And we aren’t always checking line items on our account statements. (If I were business savvy, I’d make Ending Note a subscription.)

But imagine your family trying to figure out which of these charges are important and which ones can be cancelled. Is that $15 monthly charge for essential software or for a language learning app you abandoned after two weeks? They won’t know unless you tell them.

Going through your subscriptions regularly is good financial hygiene. Documenting what you’re paying for and why is also part of estate planning. It helps your family make informed decisions about what to keep and what to cancel.

A quick subscription audit is a one-two punch!

Plus, you might find some money you didn’t know you were spending. When I cancelled subscriptions I wasn’t using I saved 4000 yen a month that I can now spend on more important things.

Like good meditation apps or conbini fried chicken.

Autopay is wonderful until you’re not around to monitor it anymore.

Most of us have at least some bills set to automatically deduct from our bank accounts or charge to our credit cards. Utilities, phone service, streaming subscriptions, insurance premiums, maybe rent or mortgage payments.

This is great for convenience and for making sure you never miss a payment. It’s less great when someone needs to figure out what’s being automatically paid, when, and from which accounts.

Your electricity bill might be coming out of your Japanese bank account via direct debit. Your Netflix subscription might be charging to your US credit card. Your phone service might be deducting from your PayPay balance. Your life insurance might be automatically withdrawing from a different Japanese account.

If something happens to you, your family needs to know about these automatic payments for two reasons: first, so they can keep essential services like electricity and phone running and second, so they can cancel non-essential services (like that meditation app you’re still paying for but never use).

The solution is documentation – a list of what’s being automatically paid from where. You can even include account numbers, payment amounts, and contact information for each service.

It’s tedious to write it all down in the Ending Note, but it’s incredibly helpful when someone else needs to take over your financial responsibilities temporarily or permanently.