[adventured]

It's not the exchange rate. It's 30 years of economic destruction and currency devaluation as the end result of horrific spending policies. If Japan doesn't right the ship, they'll sink into middle income territory over the next 30 years. Poland and Greece are now just slightly below them in GDP per capita - and Lithuania is above them (unthinkable circa the mid 1990s).

Realistically Japan is very close to being a second tier economy. It's quite plausible that Croatia and Latvia will pass them on GDP per capita over the next decade. 7-11 Japan would be relatively inexpensive for the citizens of any affluent nation, because Japan is so much poorer than it used to be.

[rjh29]

7/11 is still 30-50% more expensive than the supermarkets, so irrespective of how affluent people are, it's a poor choice.

I used 'exchange rate' because not only is the yen weak, but the USD seems pretty strong - I guess it depends on where in the US you are from, but as a Brit, US feels expensive to me, Japan feels cheap, ergo Americans must find Japan even cheaper than I do.

[wahnfrieden]

I think tourists just don't know the names of grocery stores, don't see them on social media, and don't expect them to have essentially all the same items as convenience stores (and in even greater variety) because ones back home have disappointing prepared and packaged foods. They also just don't care about wasting money when it already feels cheap.

Unrelated but another tip unknown to tourists is to get cold drinks (even alcohol) at pharmacies instead of convenience stores: their beverage fridges tend to be set much colder.

[jmknoll]

Thank you. I live in Japan and it is incredibly frustrating to hear people here talk about the exchange rate as if it is some temporary but unfortunate weather condition, rather than the downstream effect of a generation of terrible policy decisions that it actually is

[rjh29]

Probably more accurate to say the bubble period was the weather condition and the current rate is more of an equilibrium.

[wahnfrieden]

Convenience stores have gotten more expensive but they've always been an expensive option in Japan. It's always been much cheaper to go to grocery stores or other such alternatives to get the same items.

[AtlasBarfed]

Aren't in late stage techno consumerist demographic collapse that many others (Germany, China, yeesh, South Korea) aren't going to suffer from to an even worse degree?

I guess one could point to various policies, especially with pseudo- protectionist benefits given to the Japanese mega conglomerates, which like in Korea are kind of just an extension of the government.

But I wonder if such economic policy fumbling is in an evil outgrowth as people try to deal with the underlying collapse.

[nokeya]

And now compare not the numbers, but what these countries actually produce, in global sense. Japan produces cars, electronics, medical and precision stuff, cultural exports. And what do Croatia produce? Not even speaking about almost dying Latvia and Lithuania.

[osnium123]

Is it their spending habits and resulting expenditure on infrastructure or is it their currency policies to try to boost exports? Not challenging but asking for clarification.

[dmos62]

> Poland and Greece are now just slightly below them in GDP per capita - and Lithuania is above them (unthinkable circa the mid 1990s)

Re Poland and Lithuania: USSR collapsed in early 90s, and many would have been forgiven for thinking that these countries would continue to live in poverty, which they obviously didn't. Notably, USSR was a donut empire where the peripheral regions were richer and more educated than the heartland. That's also why the collapse of USSR started there. Sarah Paine talks about that.

[pyrale]

The countries you cite all exited communism ruined but with an educated workforce and a working education system, and benefited tremendously from EU access.

It is not that Japan has fallen to their level, it’s that they have experienced an economic boom in the last decades, and are not that far behind western Europe now.