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“She would have wanted…” is the beginning of every family argument that could have been prevented.

Your family loves you and wants to honor your memory, but they don’t actually know what you want unless you tell them. They’re going to guess based on what they remember you saying, what they think you would have preferred, and what seems right to them.

The problem is that different family members will have different guesses, all of them sincere and well-intentioned.

Your sister remembers you saying you wanted to be cremated. Your brother remembers you saying burial was important. You probably said both things at different times, in different contexts, without thinking about the contradiction.

Your spouse thinks you’d want a celebration of life with music and stories. Your parents think you’d want a traditional religious service. Your best friend thinks you’d want everyone to get drunk and tell embarrassing stories about you.

They’re all trying to do right by you, but they’re working from incomplete information and their own assumptions about what you valued.

The solution is to be explicit about your preferences, even for things that seem obvious or unimportant to you.

“I don’t care; I’ll be dead” is a selfish statement.

Write down what you want. Include whatever details about tone, style, location, participants, and any specific elements that matter to you. Explain your reasoning if it will help your family understand your choices.

My own Ending Note includes a quirky wish: “Although I have long dreamed of becoming someone’s home decor as ashes in an urn, I will be dead, so what can I do if you don’t want that?” I mean I probably won’t haunt anyone if I don’t end up on someone’s mantle.

Now if you genuinely don’t care about certain details, say that too. “I don’t care if it’s burial or cremation, but I do want my service to be upbeat and celebratory” is useful information.

Your final wishes aren’t just about you. They’re about giving your family clear guidance so they can focus on grieving instead of guessing.

Here’s a delicate situation: your Japanese family thinks you should have a Buddhist funeral with traditional protocols. Your overseas family thinks you should have a Christian burial in your hometown. You’re not particularly religious and honestly just want people to remember you fondly.

Who’s right?

Everyone and no one. Different cultures have different ways of honoring the dead, and all of them are valid within their own contexts. The problem is when these different approaches conflict and nobody knows what you actually wanted.

This is especially complicated for foreign residents because your death affects people from multiple cultures who might have very different expectations.

Your Japanese colleagues might expect to attend a formal funeral service. Your family back home might expect to have a memorial service in your hometown. Your international friends in Japan might prefer something more casual and personal.

To be honest, it’s exactly the same way with inter-cultural weddings.

There’s no rule that says you can only have one service or that everyone has to participate in the same rituals. You can have a Buddhist ceremony in Japan and a memorial service back home. You can have formal and informal gatherings. You can accommodate different cultural expectations without forcing anyone to choose.

It’s smart to think about this in advance and communicate your preferences clearly.

Otherwise, well-meaning family members from different cultures will try to do what they think is appropriate, and they might end up stepping on each other’s toes or creating conflicts that reflect cultural misunderstandings rather than genuine disagreements.

Plan for multiple audiences with different expectations. Give people permission to honor you in ways that make sense within their cultural context.

Everyone wins when everyone feels included.

Ben Tanaka sat down with me (well, via Zoom) to launch his new video series “In Conversation” and talk about the Ending Note and my retirement plans. It was a cheerful conversation, despite the Ending Note being a somewhat somber and serious topic.

If you are interested in the Ending Note, I recommend checking out Retire Japan, too. It’s an excellent resource for anyone planning to retire in Japan, currently retired here, or generally investing and saving for the future. Ben’s created myriad YouTube videos, a newsletter, a forum, and also offers personal consultations. https://www.retirejapan.com/

Family conflicts during estate settlement usually aren’t about money. They’re about interpretation.

“Mom always said she wanted a simple funeral” – but what does “simple” mean? No flowers? No reception? Just immediate family? Everyone has a different definition.

“Dad wanted his tools to go to someone who would use them” – but which tools, and which person? There might be three relatives who all work with their hands.

“She always talked about donating to charity” – but which charities, and how much? Vague intentions become specific arguments when there’s actual money involved.

The more specific you are about your wishes, the less room there is for family members to impose their own interpretations or argue about what you “really meant.”

Instead of “I want a simple funeral,” write “I want cremation, no viewing, a small service for immediate family only, followed by a casual reception at home with sandwiches and coffee.”

Instead of “Give my tools to someone who will use them,” write “Give my woodworking tools to my nephew Mike, my car maintenance tools to my neighbor Tom, and donate the rest to the local high school shop class.”

Instead of “Donate to charity,” write “Donate $5,000 to the local animal shelter and $3,000 to the literacy foundation.”

Yes, this level of specificity feels controlling. But it prevents family members from having to guess what you wanted, and it prevents arguments about competing interpretations.

Clear instructions aren’t about controlling people from beyond the grave. They’re about preventing conflicts during a time when your family is already stressed and emotional.

Give them one less thing to argue about.

What happens if your first choice for emergency decision-maker is unreachable when you need them?

Your designated power of attorney might be traveling. Your emergency contact might be sick. Your closest friend might be dealing with their own crisis. Life is unpredictable, and the people you’re counting on might not be available exactly when you need them.

This is why you need backup plans for your backup plans.

Think about it like a chain of command: if person A can’t be reached, contact person B. If person B is unavailable, contact person C. Include contact information for each person and specific instructions about what each person is authorized to do.

If this sounds familiar, then you might be a member of your local kumiai in Japan – the group that shares responsibility for the common areas in the neighborhood.

Make sure each person on your list knows they’re on the list and knows who comes before and after them. Nobody should be surprised to get a call asking them to make important decisions on your behalf.

(For introverts like me who don’t like asking for help, this is a roadblock. There will be a separate post about this.)

Also think about different types of emergencies. The person who’s best for making short-term medical decisions might not be the best person for handling long-term financial management. The person who can drop everything to help in a crisis might not be the person you want managing your affairs for months.

Have different hierarchies for different situations, and make sure everyone understands their role. You might want to make different versions of the Emergency Access Guide to fit your hierarchies.

Of course you will ensure at least one person on each list is in Japan and can navigate Japanese systems. Having all your emergency contacts overseas doesn’t help if the emergency requires someone who can physically go to a Japanese bank or hospital.

Geography matters when you need someone to take action on your behalf.

Power of attorney sounds scary and formal, but it’s really just a legal document that says “this person can make decisions for me when I can’t make them myself.”

There are different types:

Financial power of attorney 財務代理権 lets someone manage your money, pay your bills, and handle business transactions. This is useful if you’re traveling, hospitalized, or otherwise unable to manage your finances temporarily.

Medical power of attorney 医療代理権 lets someone make healthcare decisions if you’re unconscious or otherwise unable to communicate your preferences.

General power of attorney 一般委任状 covers everything. This can be a limited power of attorney that covers only specific situations or time periods.

The key thing to understand is that power of attorney only works while you’re alive. Once you die, these documents become invalid and control transfers to your estate executor or next of kin according to your will and local law.

Also, power of attorney documents from your home country might not be valid in Japan, and Japanese power of attorney documents might not be valid in your home country. If you have assets in multiple countries, you might need multiple documents.

This is why you need to talk to actual lawyers who understand international estate planning, not just get forms off the Internet.

But the basic principle is simple: decide who you trust to make decisions for you, figure out what decisions they might need to make, and create legal documents that give them the authority to do so.

It’s like giving someone a spare key to your house, except the key unlocks your financial and medical decisions instead of your front door.

Here’s a question that sounds simple but isn’t: if you can’t make decisions for yourself, who should make them for you?

In an ideal world, you’d have one trusted person who understands your values, knows your preferences, and has the legal authority to act on your behalf. In the real world, it’s more complicated.

Maybe your closest family member lives overseas and can’t realistically manage day-to-day decisions in Japan. Maybe your closest friend in Japan isn’t comfortable making major financial or medical decisions. Maybe the person you trust most isn’t the person who’s best equipped to handle bureaucracy.

This is why power of attorney documents exist – they let you designate specific people for specific types of decisions. You can have one person handle medical decisions and another handle financial decisions. You can have primary and backup decision-makers.

But you have to think through who should handle what, and you have to make sure the people you’re designating actually want the responsibility and understand what it involves.

Don’t just pick someone because they’re geographically convenient or because you think you should. Pick someone because they’re actually the right person for the job.

And definitely don’t assume that legal family relationships automatically translate to decision-making authority in Japan. Japanese law might not recognize your overseas spouse’s authority to make medical decisions, or your adult children’s right to access your bank accounts.

If you want specific people to have specific authority, you need to document that formally and legally.

Otherwise, someone else will be making those decisions, and it might not be someone you would have chosen.

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?