Thursday, March 22, 2012

Solitary lives, sad deaths

In recent months there have been several cases of solitary deaths in Japan. People found days, weeks or even months after their deaths. Sometimes they were too old or handicapped people, who lived alone or with someone in similar circumstances.
Recent statistics show that for the first time the average number od people living in each household in Tokyo has fallen under two. These data once again warns us of the need to prepare for the inevitable, a society with more and more people dependent and no one willing to take care of them.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

"I understand the North Koreans"


The announcement by North Korea that it will put a satellite into orbit has warned the whole region. No need to be very smart to know that to do so you need technology similar to that of long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. This fact calls into question the sincerity of Pyongyang when it recently reached an agreement with the United States to get help in exchange for rethinking its nuclear weapons program.

It is anticipated that one of the rockets will fly over part of Japan and might even fall on it. So the Japanese government has already announced that it prepares the Self-Defense Forces anti missile batteries  in case they have to intercept and destroy the North Korean gadget.

This new episode of the conflict between North Korea and its neighbors has reminded me what a South-Korean friend recently told me: "I fully understand what North Korea does."  He told explained that seeing what is happening in other parts of the world, makes Pyongyang think that atomic bombs are one of the few things that can deter it’s enemies of trying to destabilize the regime.

Monday, March 19, 2012

The best ramen I've ever eaten

 I recently went to eat at Ramen Yokocho, an alley in downtown Sapporo where all the restaurants serve this specialty. I went armed with my chronic skepticism, thinking it was quite possible that I was going to be served a soup vulgar enough to satisfy my voracity.
I got a pleasant surprise. A first taste of the noodles was enough to determine that this was the best ramen I've ever eaten in my life. It was Sapporo ramen, of course. That is, the noodles floating in a rich beef broth with a miso base, vegetables and pork slices. 
Simply sublime.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Uniqlo opens multilingual megastore in Ginza


The clothing chain Uniqlo has launched today a 12-story and nearly 5,000 square meters store  in Tokyo, in the main street of Ginza, the area known as the home of the most sophisticated and luxurious shops in the country. It will be the chain’s biggest store  and will have staff able to speak in English, Korean, Chinese, Spanish and French.
The company has its origin in the 80's in Yamaguchi, near Hiroshima, about 800kilometers from Tokyo. Its success has been based on  cheap production of its products in China with Japanese design and quality control. 
While in Japan many shops and department stores were still betting on a multitude of brands at exclusivist prices, Uniqlo stores were selling only it’s brand with a very good relationship between price and quality.

In 1994 it had 100 stores in Japan. Today there are about 800, and 200 more in the rest of the world (more than half in South Korea and China). And prospects to keep growing and become a global enterprise. The opening of the multilingual superstore in the neighborhood of luxury in Tokyo is significant. Products are designed in Japan, produced in China and sold to the world, with stores in an increasing number of countries, and now in Japan itself. 
Why? Until the Fukushima fudge, the number of foreign tourists in Japan had been rising.
With the Chinese Yuan up and the Yen down, the prospects are for that tendency to be reinforced.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

The yen falls and the Nikkei climbs. Economic recovery?


The Tokyo stock market index has regained the 10,000 points and the yen has lost 7% of its value since the beginning of the year. The Yomiuri newspaper has described the combination as a sign of economic recovery. Others are the increase, for a sixth consecutive month, of sales of cars, luxury watches and first class airline tickets in the Japanese market.
On the other hand, the increase in share prices appears to be due to a return of investors, including foreigners, who know a low yen  improves sales of large export companies.
Why does the yen fall? There are several explanations. Among them: those who speculate in currencies now seem to opt for the Brazilian real and the Korean won; the flow of money repatriated to Japan to escape the European instability and to address the losses caused by the tsunami has slowed.
Obviously, a cheap yen is not going to please everyone all the time in Japan. For example, it wont make happy sellers of luxury German cars or Japanese drivers when they go to fill up their tanks.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Japanese-Brazilians leave Japan.


The emigration of Japanese to Brazil to work at coffee plantations began in 1908. The population kept flowing -with highs and lows- in that direction for decades. Today there are approximately one and a half million Brazilians of Japanese descent living in the South American country.Eighty-two years later the direction of migration was reversed. In the 90s  Brazilians began to move to Japan. The country was in need of manpower for the industry and gave preference to foreign workers of Japanese descent. Many left hiperinflation in Brazil and went Est for the dream of prosperity in the land of their parents or grandparents. Japan seemed then capable of becoming the world's number one economy.
But not all was to be easy because, eventhough they had Japanese blood in the veins, they still were strangers in a society convinced and proud until recently of being one of the most homogenous in the world. The number of so-called Nikkei-jin was increasing in Japan as the country stuck in the economic stagnation that followed the bubble burst in 1991. They became 270,000, living together with some 60,000 Peruvians of Japanese origin.
Since then, the flow of people has changed direction once more. In 2009 the Japanese government approved paying the trip back to their country to those Nikkei who wanted to leave, on condition that they would never re-apply for residence in Japan. The Japanese did that because unemployment in the country threatened to pick up over 5%.
But perhaps it was not necessary because, during these years, the number of Brazilians of Japanese origin who returned to Brazil has been increasing. They want to profit from the economic boom generated by political stability,  the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics in Rio. More than 40,000 are presumed to have already left japan for Brazil.
Will Japan need them again? Or will it transform and adapt to a new economic role, with less intensive manufacturing, less people and a better quality of life?

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Nobody wants the debris caused by the tsunami?

It's been a year since the tsunami and only 6% of the debris generated by the big wave has been removed from the area. Why? Basically, because so far the rest of Japan is very reluctant to accept them.

A few days ago, Professor Yoshio Sugimoto used this fact to explain the regional duality in the country. Behind the modern metropolis there are backward rural areas with declining and increasingly aged populations, largely devoted to providing the urban areas. For example, the northeast, now affected by the disaster and the stigma of Fukushima, used to produce much of the energy consumed in the provinces of metropolitan Tokyo.

Now they get solidarity in the form of good words, and even money, but they also receive cold responses to requests for cooperation in this regard. The central government has just announced it wants to assume the task of finding destinations for the debris.

It is capital. Because without removing it building can't be done. But also because the devastating psychological effect it has on the survivors to live surrounded by the remains of their past, now a pile of garbage.