As some people may know, I moved to Japan in early 2020 and I feel like I’ve successfully established myself. I’ve also spent time in Taiwan throughout the years and am starting a phase of splitting my time between Tokyo and Taipei so that I can explore my roots. These two places are a great base to explore Asia from, and I’ve been frequently traveling all around. Thus, I’m starting a new blog / newsletter for practical guides for life in Asia that will be separate from DEM Flyers content, though travel tips will still be cross-posted here! I would greatly appreciate any support.
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Hello from the SFO Polaris lounge! I’m flying to Japan in ANA First Class tonight thanks to wide-open award space that happened earlier this year. At SFO, the lounges all close by 10 pm (Centurion at 9 pm, KLM at 7:45 pm), but the flight is at 1:45 am, so ANA issues $30 meal vouchers per passenger in the form of a Mastercard Gift Card. Terms state the merchant must be categorized as “food, dining, or restaurant.” It’s the same GC that United, Alaska, and Delta issue (though I hear they are sometimes Discover cards), with the same zip code of 60173. You receive a QR code and the card number, expiration date, CVV, and billing zip code. From some internet sleuthing, I found the entire billing address: 1475 E Woodfield Rd, Schaumburg, IL 60173.
I’ve reviewed Gopuff over a year ago (don’t use my referral since I just got banned); back then there were many problems with Chase not auto-crediting those of us in states where the charge posted as BEVMO rather than GOPUFF. Well, they fixed that a few months in and I was happily humming away with up to 12 orders per month with all my Chase cards for a while up until the last week of March. I was trying to pick up drinks for my birthday party, but the payment kept erroring out. I thought perhaps some drinks were low stock, so I kept changing the order, and I also tried other cards in my account. No luck.
Last year in March 2022, I went to Tomorrowland Winter for the first time! And now this year I am going again in a few days! I’m a fan of snow sports as well as music festivals, and having been to the summer version of Tomorrowland a few times, I thought this would be the perfect festival. And it was a blast, though there were a few rocky edges.
Where and when?
Tomorrowland Winter is held in the beautiful ski resort town of Alpe d’Huez in the southeast of France, in late March. The first edition was held in 2019, but then 2020 and 2021 were canceled due to COVID. Tomorrowland has a 5 year contract with Alpe d’Huez, so it’s safe to say the next few years will be held there. The event goes on for a week – you can either get a 7 day pass for the whole week or a 4 day pass for the latter half of the week. Most of the main DJs will be in the latter half of the week, and I didn’t want to spend a whole week there, so I opted for the 4 day option. However, this year I’m going for the full 7 days.
Avail.co (referral link) is a free all-in-one platform that is part of realtor.com, made to facilitate everything landlords and renters need. I became a landlord for the first time this year, and was so grateful to have found Avail to manage everything in one place – from creating a listing to posting it on multiple sites to accepting renter applications to performing background and reference checks to generating a state-specific lease to managing payments to resolving maintenance tickets from your tenant and more. You can manage multiple properties easily through this site and see everything in one dashboard.
Most of us know that shopping internationally can mean a significant savings especially with tax refunds via Global Blue, Planet Payment, Travelex, etc. I recently returned from Paris, where I shopped at a few stores who did tax refunds via Global Blue. However, I also discovered and tried out a newer service called Wevat (referral REQRESZQ for additional 5 euros refund; I receive no commission) for smaller purchases, and I’m here to report the experience!
Prefacing that Japan is not open to foreign tourists currently, but this post is for future reference. The coronavirus pandemic affected Japan heavily, like many other regions in the world, but along with it came the rising trend of remote work. In response, several Shinkansen bullet train operators in Japan started providing a remote work train service.
For example, the Tohoku, Joetsu, and Hokuriku Shinkansen trains, which service Kanazawa, Niigata, and the Tohoku region of Japan started an office car service. In the office car, passengers are explicitly allowed to make phone calls and join online meetings from the train, which are activities normally discouraged on trains in general in Japan. There’s no extra charge for this service, you just need to explicitly reserve a special car on the train. You should be able to reserve this with the various JR Passes as well, either the nationwide pass or the JR East Pass. I haven’t ridden this myself, but you can read more details here: https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/11/e3350c504173-jr-east-launches-bullet-train-office-cars-amid-telework-demand.html
Starting today, January 20, 2022, you can order one of the two Art x Platinum designs for your American Express Platinum consumer card (not Business Platinums currently).
Sign in to your account, click on your Platinum card, and go to Account Services > Replace a Card > I want to change my Card’s design. It only worked for my vanilla Plat; it doesn’t seem like we can replace Schwab or other Plats yet.
I’ve been using eMed, a telemedicine service utilizing the Abbott BINAXNow COVID-19 rapid antigen test kit (which is NOT a molecular NAAT/PCR test), several times over 4 months now to fulfill the 1 day COVID test requirement on international flights to the US. This kit is officially accepted by the CDC for travel to the United States, and as of Dec 6, 2021, a COVID-19 test (molecular or antigen like this one) is required within 1 calendar day of flight departure to the US. Previously, they accepted a test within 72 hours of departure.
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