I am excited to launch a project today that will benefit thousands of people in Japan for years to come: foreign residents with roots overseas; families with mixed heritage; and Japanese nationals with foreign connections and investments.
It’s a bilingual workbook to help you pull together life’s important paperwork from emergency contacts to global investments. A deeper form of emergency preparedness that reaches right through to end-of-life.
The International Resident’s Ending Note is a riff on Japanese end-of-life workbooks, but this one recognises two important differences:
- Many people in living Japan have assets, obligations, and connections beyond Japan;
- Ending Notes aren’t really about preparing for death; they catalog your life so you can live without worry.
Living in Japan gives us enough things to worry about: natural disasters; language barriers; and bureaucracy that nobody understands. Let’s not also stress about how contacts will find what they need in an emergency. Being organised with an Ending Note gives you confidence.
Even though I created this, I was not prepared for how satisfying it was to fill in the workbook. It’s big-time adulting that isn’t easy. There are many irritating parts, like looking up SWIFT codes and getting access to long lost accounts. I shed a few tears, too, thinking about my family after my demise. But overcoming those hurdles and emotions settled my underlying anxiety. A big relief!
How this project came to be
I created the Ending Note because getting organized was the only way to stop my brain from spinning through endless “what if” scenarios.
Soon I’ll turn sixty. I’ve lived in Japan almost half my life. I own a house; I love my neighborhood; and I don’t foresee returning to the US where I was born.
And I’ve been exceedingly lazy about keeping paperwork organised. In fact I’d lost track of some old pensions. I even have a bank account I hadn’t logged into for years. I needed to get organised and control my financial life.
And to think ahead a decade or two.
What’s going to happen when I die? Japan’s death procedures are a lot different than America’s. That’s going to be a challenge for my American family and heirs. How will they know what to do?
So with my usual “solve the problem you see” attitude, I wrote the two books I needed.
Book 1: International Resident’s Ending Note
The Ending Note is a 59 page workbook that you fill in section by section. It covers basics like where you keep your important documents, who to contact in an emergency, and keeping with the Japanese style ending note it has a section for end-of-life details, too.
Because everyone’s life is different, large portions of the of the workbook are modular to accommodate almost any circumstance. There are pages you can duplicate to cover all your bank accounts, your local and global real estate holdings, and vehicles. If you have pensions, insurance policies, valuable items in any country, you’ll find places to note them.
Book 2: Family Guide
This one is for my sister. Or for your sister…or whoever is on the other side of an ocean or border and might need to help settle your affairs.
It includes a step-by-step timeline of what to do in Japan. There are explanations of where to go, the required documents, and what to expect. It all links back to the Ending Note. There’s even a Japanese glossary and phrasebook for an analog fallback to communication.
So if you are interested in getting organised, creating peace of mind for your loved ones, and living your life with less worry, get your copy of the printable PDFs for just 3000 yen – less expensive than an evening at the izakaya.
