The truth is that Japan is probably nowhere as expensive as you may think (or fear). Even living in Tokyo can be manageable, assuming that you get a reasonably priced place to rent. This article hopes to introduce to you some ways of coping and forcing down your costs.

This is more meant for people living in Japan than touring it (though there’s nothing stopping tourists from using the tips here). Also, the stuff here has been formulated mostly by me and other students in Japan – and as you may or may not know students love to save in ridiculous ways to spend money on ridiculous things! Some of the tips here may seem extremely trivial but hey, a yen saved is a yen spendable on something else.

Food

You need food to survive so you’ll definitely need to spend some money on this. But there are ways of suppressing the cost.

1. Cook.

This may be obvious at first, but keep with me here, it gets more specific. Assuming that you know where to shop for your ingredients cooking may be able to slash your expenditure on food to one third of what it might be without. One friend (American, Male) spends less than 10,000 yen a month by cooking three times every day. Is three times a day too much? Cook two portions for dinner and leave half for the microwave for lunch tomorrow. Saves you both the money and the expense.

Even if you don’t want to cook whole meals, even just cooking the rice and bringing it with you for lunch (mainly applicable for students) will save you money in the long run.

2. Shop Smart – At The Wholesale Market

Wholesale markets (ie. 業務用スーパー) are places where restaurant owners go to buy their ingredients. These places are your friends especially if you cook a lot. There are a few good places worth keeping in mind.

1) Costco: Readers from North America and the UK may recognize this. Yes it’s in Japan too. You need to pay 4000 yen for the membership but if you’re sharing a house with people, you can split it up. Anyways, if you’re living nearby it’s definitely worth it as things are quite cheap.

• Official Site to check shop locations
• Further Reading: Costco Japan, by Danny Choo

2) Gyomu Suupaa (業務スーパー): My personal favorite. Quite widespread throughout the whole country. Generally very low prices, especially if you don’t mind frozen foods or large product sizes. Some produce (generally vegetables) may be cheaper somewhere else, but this is generally a safe bet for low prices.

For example …

138 yen for 500 grams of frozen vegetables is probably going to be the cheapest you can find. (It’s usually even cheaper – it’s the end of winter now so vegetable prices are a bit higher than usual)

And also…

19 Yen udon!

3. Shop smart – And Late If You Don’t Plan To Cook

9.45 pm at my local supermarket (note: mine’s a 24 hour one so the discounts aren’t that steep. For supermarkets with a closing time discounts can go all the way until 50% before closing)

Most supermarkets will start offering discounts for their ready-to-eat food nearing closing time. Generally, 2-3 hours before closing 10% discount tags start to get tacked on. As closing time approaches these go up all the way to 50% discounts – you can get a nice ready-made meal at a very reasonable price if you go late to your supermarket near 9 pm.

4. Miscellaneous Tips From Me And My Friends

Buy 輸入食品 (imported foods), like meat from America or Australia, or frozen food from China, bananas from the Philippines, etc. never buy Japan 国産 (made domestically) stuffs.

Yes made-in-Japan produce tends to be more expensive indeed.

Buy strawberries meant for jam/juice at a lower price – jam/juice strawberries usually look quite terrible and are close to being overripe but they taste great still. And are cheap, for about 198jpy per pack over here in Kyoto. … I find them in random supermarkets.

Never done this myself but sounds legit – better than being overcharged just because of the unnecessary packaging.

If you like tea, forget buying even the 2 liter bottles they sell. Buy tea packs instead (and buy bottled water online if you don’t like tap).

Making your own tea is really a lot cheaper than buying it. And bottled water online is much cheaper than buying it in the actual stores.

In MCD (Macdonalds), check the keitai (mobile phone) coupon before buying anything. Also, having 2 or 3 100yen burgers plus one 100yen S size drink would be enough to make you as full as buying those expensive set meals.

Ie. subscribe to the Line/email mailing lists of restaurants such as McDonalds, Sukiya etc. They often send discount coupons to subscribers via these lists.

If you’re eating out consider places (usually family restaurants（ファミレス） such as Gasto if you just want somewhere to have a nice long chat with people. They have things called drink bars ie. a free flow of soft drinks, tea and coffee for an unlimited period of time. Also consider this if you need to study etc.

Stalk out your local stores. Some of them may have special days of the week / month where they have big discounts on a certain item eg. meat. Shop according to the calendar after you find this out.

Avoid: convenience stores… you pay for convenience, not for the value. If there’s a convenience store there’s probably a supermarket nearby. Find the supermarket and shop there.

Avoid: being picky. I don’t know what you Europeans call bread. As far as I am concerned if it’s made out of raised flour and is fluffy it is bread. We all have our pet peeves of how Japan bastardizes/does not have (it usually is either-or) our favorite national food which we miss – but demanding it is going to cost you a bomb. So you might as well start learning how to cook/eat Japanese stuff! Hey that’s what you’re here for right?

General Shopping

What about other shopping related things, then?

1. 100 Yen Shops

The first thing that you need to do when you arrive to Japan is to find the nearest 100 yen shop and raid it for anything you possibly need. Daiso and Seria are the more major ones. Go to their websites, search for the nearest one to your house and plunder it.

2. Point cards…

What you may (not) want to do

This can help you to save money in the long run. But get too many and you’ll find your wallet bursting with plastic.

Generally drug store point cards may not be very useful because they tend to go along the lines of 1 point per 100 yen spent, and 500 yen redeemable after reaching 500 points. Which means you need to spend 50,000 yen to get the discount. Not very useful in my opinion.

Instead consider getting point cards for the big electric stores such as Yamada Denki or Yodobashi Camera – you’ll probably need to go there occasionally for printer ink/appliances etc if you don’t buy those online. Those give you 10% of the amount you spend in terms of points so that helps in the long run.

3. Consider Shopping Online

Photos by Thomas

For Sayonara Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn – kudos if you get the reference.

Nowadays you can get everything and anything online and usually for a reasonable price. Some websites you may want to check out are:

1. http://kakaku.com/ – helps you directly compare the same product being sold over multiple sites so that you can make the best buys.
2. http://classifieds.gaijinpot.com/ – full of second-hand stuff which people want to get rid off for cheap or for free. Watch out especially for “sayonara sales” from people leaving Japan.
3. http://www.nitori-net.jp/ – for furniture
4. Groupon / Groupon-ish sites – such as http://www.groupon.jp/ or http://ponpare.jp/. These can get you good deals for eating out/travel/whatever if you keep your eyes open and snap up the attractive ones.
5. Portal sites – such as http://www.rakuten.co.jp/　and http://www.qoo10.jp/ are also worth looking at. That being said whether the deal is good depends on the individual vendor.

4. Also consider buying things second-hand.

Check for 2nd hand shops (リサイクルショップ) such as 2nd Steet which sell a whole variety of goods second hand. Recycl-navi is another website listing these 2nd hand shops in each prefecture.

For clothes, Shimokitazawa (Tokyo) for example has lots of second hand clothing shops. Find out where the second-hand clothes districts are if you want to save up.

5. For weird souvenirs:

With this kind of stuff you can’t possibly go wrong.

Need to get some souvenirs for a short trip home? I recommend Don Quijote. When you’ve got a departmental store which sells things like these you probably can’t go wrong.

Transport

Getting around can be a big expense. Trains, buses, taxis… you name it. Here are some ways to save money on transport.

1. Cycle

If you’re in Japan for more than ~6 months this will likely save you money unless you live very nearby to a convenient train station. After all…

• Buses are around 200 yen per ride. This adds up quickly. You might as well bike to the nearest station.
• Having a bicycle also widens the area you can shop – meaning that you probably can shop cheaper with one.
• Bicycle vandalism / theft is not common in Japan so it’s unlikely that you’ll have to pay extra beyond the buying the bicycle.

2. Kaisuuken

If there’s a route that you frequently use and which your commuter/student pass does not cover, you may consider getting some kaisuukens （回数券）. The system differs from company to company but some may for example sell you 11 tickets for the price of 10 for a single route (eg. JR East, Hankyu). Some may even sell off-peak hour kaisuuken for even steeper discounts.

They expire in about 3 months so only buy these for routes you reasonably use. Also, this may not be compatible with your IC card so you’ll have to keep the paper tickets in your wallet if you do so.

3. Special Tickets (eg. Seishun 18)

Tourists to Japan may know of the JR rail pass which allows for unlimited Shinkansen and JR use within the period of time. Unfortunately that’s limited to tourists. But, even if you’re a long-term resident in Japan there’s other things you can use.

Consider:

1. Limited area unlimited use passes – For example Kyoto residents will know about the 500 yen, 1 day free pass on Kyoto city buses. JR East offers unlimited railway use for a day within the 23 wards of Tokyo for 730 yen. This may be useful when you need to pop by multiple places in a day.
2. The Seishun 18 – Very useful if you like watching countryside scenery / have time to spare. A useful and relevant article can be found here

4. Buses are good too.

Especially if you want to travel long distances. For example, the cheapest trip between Tokyo and Osaka is around 3500 yen single-way; the same trip on JR (excluding the Seishun 18) would cost at least 8000 yen and take around 9 hours if you’re just riding local trains. Plus you get a seat.

Willer Express may be good if you’re not confident of your Japanese ability, but otherwise Rakuten has a whole slew of bus operators in its travel section.

5. Budget airlines for very long distances.

Because at long distances…

1. The availability of bus routes dwindles. Plus, 14 hour bus rides damage people’s sanity.
   2) Trains become increasingly expensive and take very long too.

At shorter distances do note that because airports are less convenient than major bus terminals, it may be more expensive (and take longer when adding waiting time etc) than buses.

Note: Hitchhiking is not often practiced in Japan. Wikitravel has an artice about if you want to try though.

Avoid: The Shinkansen. Yes it cuts down the traveling time to around 2 and a half hours between Tokyo and Osaka. But the title of this article is how to save money not how to zip across Japan. Plus, an extremely roomy 2 seat-per-row overnight bus costs about 10,000 between Tokyo and Kansai (cheaper than the Shinkansen) – take your pick.

Lodging / Rent

1.Rent

Really can’t be avoided but there are a few things you can do:

• Consider moving into a share-house such as those operated by Oakhouse(English) instead of a typical apartment. Saves money and you can make friends albeit at the cost of having to share amenities.
• Try apartments without the 敷金 (shikikin – something like a deposit) and the 礼金 (reikin – the money you have to pay as thanks, yes seriously). Also ensure that the shikikin and reikin aren’t just reflected in an inflated monthly rent price.
• Because the Japanese are very particular about having a bathtub / ofuro, searching for an apartment with only a shower may be cheaper.
• From a friend: “I’m not sure but somebody once told me that there are special offers like renting an apartment where some poor soul committed suicide … and it’s much cheaper (c)” Another friend says, “Yeah I’ve heard of places being cheaper because of suicides or murders, too. They call it 事故物件 (or 訳あり物件）.”

Oh, right, Tofugu wrote about that: “How To Avoid (Or Even Find) A Stigmatized Property In Japan”

Worth a shot maybe?

2.Temporary lodging

If you find yourself needing to stay someplace temporarily (for example, when traveling within Japan) you may want to consider the following options:

• Capsule Hotels: Available in the major cities. Cheap but I HIGHLY RECOMMEND (from personal experience) to buy some 100 yen earplugs if noise bothers you.
• Hostels: Consider the youth hostels operated by this group (English map). Same thing applies, ear plugs recommended.
• Wikitravel also has an article on camping if you really don’t want to spend any money on lodging.

Utilities

Generally you can’t do much in Summer – if you can make do with a fan instead of the AC that saves you quite a bit of money though. HOWEVER, it’s more than possible to keep warm in winter without the heater.

Behold the creativity of me and my friends!

• “Since electricity is cheaper from 11pm to 7am, only charge your computer, wash clothes and use anything that needs electricity during that time”
• Get a wearable blanket like the ones that they sell at Don Quijote. Very fluffy, comfy and is able to surprisingly negate the need for external heating.
• Pair the above with 100 yen room shoes for the cold cold floor. Or if you don’t want to…
• “Stick huge hot water bottles under your feet in bed/at your desk. I recommend the metal kind that can be reheated on the stove.” – If you’re the type to get literal “cold feet”.
• “Hang wet clothes in the room to save on humidifier bills!” (Note: this saves on having to use the clothes dryer too. Make your own clothes lines or buy indoor clothes hanging racks from Nitori)

Entertainment

Unless you like playing games in your dormitory or are content with the internet, you won’t be able to avoid spending on this. These are the ways you can make the most bang for your buck though.

1. Karaoke Deals

Karaoke is quintessential if you’re living in Japan (and a good way to shed your sense of shame). Anyways…

1. Karaoke freetimes (フリータイム) are your friend, especially if you’re a student who doesn’t have to wake up the next morning. Most times, taking a free time is more worth it if you’re staying more than 2-3 hours anyway.
2. Some Karaoke chains have special deals on weekdays such as men’s night etc. One that I frequented had a deal where on Thursdays (for men, Wednesdays for women) Karaoke was free for 2 hours if you just bought a drink.
3. Sign up to be a member. This usually automatically gives you a discount.

2. Amusement Centers

Round 1 also has an all-you-can play giant sports-and-arcade facilities for a flat fee. (A full list of shops can be found here, look out for the ones with SP (スポッチャ) highlighted in their labeling.

Kansai residents can also take advantage of Beaver World which offers the very same things PLUS Karaoke PLUS bowling under the same price.

Watch out for: Free flow drinks at Izakayas

While having free-flow alcohol may sound like a good idea, be wary of deals which are actually deceiving.

Most Izakayas will require you to order at least 1 item in addition to their automatic starter. Thus, what may look like an 800 yen 2 hour free-flow may actually be closer to 1500 when adding the starter and a dish (around 500 yen perhaps). Not to mention that the drinks are often heavily weakened.

Bonus! Free Travel!

Occasionally some of the local tourist bureaus of lesser-known cities will be fishing around for foreigners to tour their city. These are often conducted free of charge and all they require you to do is to write feedback forms / some PR material for them.

Occasionally google searching ”外国人モニターツアー” may yield you some promising results so be on the lookout for these.

By the way, add your suggestions to the comments – I may collate them into a Part 2 post with the ideas that you all have.

Relevant article:

• (Tofugu) 25 ways to save money while traveling in Japan

Bonus Wallpapers!

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American credit and debit cards are laughably primitive compared to the rest of the world. While America is the birthplace of the bank card, the country has fallen behind as the rest of the world has leapfrogged on American technology. Many other countries in the world have bank cards with much more sophisticated security mechanisms than the simple magnetic strip that’s on all of America’s credit and debit cards.

Most Americans couldn’t care less about how people in other countries spend and secure their money, but it’s funny how actually being in one of those other countries changes your mind.

Like most places in the world, you use cash for pretty much everything in Japan—because in the words of RZA, GZA, et al, “cash rules everything around me”—it’s not always convenient. You have to keep your cash reserves topped off by constantly withdrawing from ATMs, and that can be difficult because not all Japanese ATMs accept American bank cards.

Plus, keeping cash around can be a huge pain. You’ll find those flimsy ¥1 coins piling up over time with no good way to get rid of them (if only vending machines accepted them!), and you have to be rather precise when spending your cash, lest you end up with an extra ¥20,000 burning a hole in your pockets at the end of your trip.

You Have Options

I’ve been thinking a lot about alternatives to cash recently (mostly because I just finished David Wolman’s book The End of Money) and, fortunately Japan has a lot of options.

Despite not being able to use the growingly-popular and supposedly Japanese-created Bitcoin, there is still a diverse patchwork of payment options for both those just visiting Japan and those in it for the long haul.

Prepaid Cards

One of the most common alternative payment methods you’ll see in Japan is prepaid IC (integrated circuit) cards.

These things are veritable Swiss army knives. You pay a refundable deposit to get your card, put some money on it and you can use them at conbini, vending machines, pay for train tickets, as keys for coin lockers, for taxis; hell, the only thing that don’t seem to pay for is your plane ticket back home. Typically, you can buy these prepaid IC cards in train stations around Japan, so they’re easy to purchase.

There are a ton of different kinds of IC cards, but probably the most recognizable is the Suica card, with its cute penguin mascot and the incredible amount of wordplay in its name and marketing. (Read the “etymology” section of the Wikipedia article on Suica and be awed.)

There are some downsides to prepaid IC cards, though. While a lot of the major cards recently became interoperable with each other, they’re still not as universally accepted as cash and other payment methods, and all of the different types of cards can be really confusing. (Does my Pasmo card work in Hokkaido? Do I want to buy a SUGOCA or Hayakaken card?)

Phones

While Japanese phones don’t seem as advanced and cool to Westerners as they used to, they have some features that aren’t available on Western phones; or, at least, aren’t used often on Western phones.

There are lots of different ways that you can use a mobile device to make payments in Japan. Not only do some of the prepaid cards I mentioned above have corresponding mobile apps, but there are other mobile wallet applications that have been in use in Japan for years.

Using your phone to pay for things seems nice and convenient. You always have your phone on you, transacations happen quickly, and you can keep an electronic trail of your spending.

Here’s the downside: Galapagos syndrome.

Galapagos syndrome is a term people use to talk about things that have evolved to meet the unique needs of their particular environment. Most people use the phrase to talk about Japanese cell phones, which developed very differently from phones in other places of the world.

In the case of making mobile payments, Galapagos syndrome kicks in when it comes to the underlying technology. Japanese phones and Western phones have historically used different technologies to make payments (FeliCa vs NFC), so if you’re visiting Japan and you have a fancy Western phone, don’t count on it working. While Tofugu was in Japan earlier this year our own Viet was unable to use his NFC-enabled Galaxy S III phone to make payments.

Unless you have a Japanese phone, it’s doubtful that you’ll be able to make mobile payments.

Fortunately, the Japanese have been making an effort to change that in recent years, producing phones with both payment technologies or just the more universally accepted standard (NFC). It’s very possible that, in the near future, your phone will be able to make payments in Japan and you won’t have to worry one bit about the technology behind it.

For better or worse, it’s hard to go completely cashless in Japan right now. As much as we might want to avoid the hassle of moving exchange rates, compatibility with foreign banks, and just keeping track of physical yen, the time just isn’t right yet to forgo cash altogether.

Still, I think that it’s very feasible that in the next decade or so, it might be possible for you walk right on by the currency exchange window in the airport on your way to Japan armed only with your trusty phone.

Only time will tell how phone charms will factor into the equation.

Wallpapers/GIFs

Once again, our incredible illustrator Aya has provided some full-sized desktop background images and animated GIFs for your enjoyment!

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China Refuses to Confirm Okinawa Island Belongs to Japanese

Japan and China have feuded over islands in the Sea of Japan for as long as anybody can remember, but it’s always been over minor, fringe islands. It seems as if China isn’t content with that, as it’s now beginning to eye Okinawa, an island that’s more or less been indisputably Japan’s for over a century. Next up: China claims that historically, Tokyo has always been a part of China. [via Reddit]

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Donald Keene’s Latest Japanese Adventure: Donald Keene is the oldest of the old school of Japanophiles. He was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun before you were an otaku-tinted twinkle in your father’s eye. Keene is now trying out something new and very Japanese: adult adoption. The Donald adopted a friend 20 years his junior as a practical way of dealing with getting older. Can he adopt me, too?

VIDEO: “Invader Invader”, the New PV from Kyary Pamyu Pamyu: It might not seem like news that a Japanese musician has a new single out, but when that Japanese musician is pop superstar Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, I’ll make an exception. I haven’t watched the PV (promotional video) yet, but I’m guessing that there are brightly colored outfits, cute imagery, and bizarre happenings. (I joke because I love.)

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Japan Says It Will Abide by Apologies Over Actions in World War II: One of the hot-button issues in Asian politics has long been Japan apologizing for its aggression in WWII. Lately, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been worrying people at home and abroad for hinting that the Japanese government might take back its landmark 1995 apology for its wartime actions. Fortunately, a minister in the Abe cabinet has reassured the public that the government has no plans for such a reversal.

Yen Hits Century Mark the Old-Fashioned Way: The yen has been promising to hit the oh-so-significant ¥100=$1USD mark for months now but, yesterday, it finally did it. And, surprisinly, it wasn’t Abenomics that pushed the yen over the top—it was some anonymous currency trader doing a series of massive transactions that finally pushed the yen over the top.

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Author Murakami makes first Japan public appearance in 18 years

Haruki Murakami is a strange breed. Even though he’s far and away Japan’s most famous author, he’s not really that Japanese. He’s lived for a while outside of Japan, wrote his first novel in English, and is generally not that fond of publicity in his homeland. Now, after nearly two decades of public silence in japan, he’s making a public appearance to promote his new book, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. [via News On Japan]

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Bonus Wallpapers!

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NHK on changing the Japanese constitution: Last week, I mentioned that the Japanese prime minister and the political party in power in Japan have thought about amending the constitution. This week, What Japan Thinks rounded up public opinion on amending the constitution and the sentiment of the people is a resounding “meh.” Opinion is split more or less evenly three ways on changing the document, which probably means that nothing’s likely to get done and people won’t care about it, anyway. Win-win!

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Daniel Radcliffe To Star In Crime Saga ‘Tokyo Vice’: Jake Adelstein’s yakuza memoir Tokyo Vice is being adapted movie, which is pretty exciting on its own, but the big names being attached to the project is pretty astounding. Big-time music video director Anthony Mandler is set to direct, and Harry Potter wonderboy Daniel Radcliffe is tagged to star in the movie. Yer a yakuza, ‘arry!

Cool Biz season kicks off across Japan: Summer’s right around the corner in Japan, which means it’s time for “Cool Biz,” the Japanese program to get working people to dress more casually to cut down on the energy used to power air conditioners. Unfortunately, Cool Biz is kicking off during an unseasonably cool time in Japan, with temperatures hovering around 60 °F. Guess we can’t bust out the Hawaiian shirts quite yet! [via News On Japan]

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Weaker Yen Ups Cost of Life’s Simple Pleasures: We’ve talked a bit about what it means that Japan’s currency, the yen, is getting weaker and weaker, but there are consequences to the weak yen that are more terrible than anybody could have possibly imagined. A 10%-15% price increase on toilet paper? The horror . . . the horror.

LDP plans expansion of JET program:Exciting news for people who want to work in Japan! Japan’s JET program, which hires foreigners to teach English in Japan, is planned to double in size in the next couple of years, bringing a JET language assistant to every single elementary, middle, and high school in the entire country. The bad news? Incidents of kancho per capita are expected to skyrocket.

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Putin mentions even split of disputed territory in talks with Abe: source: For the first time in nearly a decade, the heads of state of Japan and Russia met this week to discuss the biggest issues affecting the two countries; among them, coming up with a peace agreement to end WWII (seriously), and divvying up some of the islands that the two countries have been fighting over for over 100 years. Exciting times! [via News On Japan]

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Part of Abenomics has been the weakening of the yen. The yen has been losing value steadily for the last few months, and last week, it even briefly reached ¥100 = $1 USD. Nothing special happens if the exchange rate hits that mark, but it’s symbolically significant. Nice, round, even numbers always make people happy.

Beyond the significance of a ¥100 to $1 exchange rate, there are lots of implications to a weak yen. A lot of people automatically assume that a weak yen is a Bad Thing. After all, it’s weak! Weak is bad, right? It’s a little more complicated than that.

We’ve talked before about the bigger implications of Abenomics but, frankly, I’m sure not many of you care that much. You’re probably not an economist, and not a lot of this affects you directly.

So I thought it might be helpful to take a look at how ordinary people are affected by Abenomics and the weak yen.

To a Foreigner

Chances are, if you’re reading this you probably live outside of Japan. In that case, good news! The weak yen is pretty much an all-around Good Thing for you. Foreigners, for the most part, benefit a lot from the weak yen.

Let’s say that you like to buy things from Japan, whether it’s a book, CD, skein of yarn or anything else. A weak yen means that these things are going to be relatively cheaper for you, so you’ll be able to buy more of your precious, precious anime.

If you’re planning on visiting Japan sometime in the near future, then even better! A weaker yen probably works in your favor. As you exchange the currency from your home country into yen, the exchange rate should favor you and give you more bang for the buck.

The only bad situation for a foreigner that I can think of is if your business depends on people in Japan buying your product. A weak yen means that the exchange rate hurts Japanese people trying to buy foreign products, but I imagine that this applies to few people reading this.

To Somebody Living in Japan

If you’re living in Japan, then the weak yen is kind of a mixed bag. The yen you earn in Japan is worth less abroad, so importing things from overseas is more expensive. Good luck getting those exotic Western animation DVDs!

But the weak yen can also be beneficial to people in Japan. If you work for a company that relies on exporting things outta Japan, then good news—people abroad will be able to buy more of your products since they’re (relatively) cheaper.

This is pretty common. Japan’s economy has historically been export-based, so many Japanese companies benefit from the weak yen. You can see some of the positive effects on Japanese companies as the Nikkei has steadily risen in the last few months.

Where Does It Go From Here?

In a nutshell, that’s how the weak yen should affect you right now.

But this is an incredibly simplified overview of the weakening of the yen. As its value goes down more and more, its more complicated effects will emerge. And who knows? In a few months, the story of the yen might make us all wonder what the hell a Bitcoin is.

Header photo by epSos.de

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Putin posts photos of puppy gifted from Akita Prefecture: Last year Russian President Vladmir Putin was gifted an adorable Akita puppy from the governor of the Akita Prefecture. In what’s presumably a gesture to show that he hasn’t had the dog killed or jailed, Putin posted pictures of him frolicking in the snow with the Akita and another. See, scary authoritarian leaders can have a soft side, too! [via News On Japan][/threecol_two] [threecol_one_last]

Sukiya, Matsuya to cut ‘gyudon’ prices: What’s better than the cheap, cheap beef bowls (AKA gyudon) from Japanese fast food giants Sukiya and Matsuya? How about even cheaper beef bowls from Sukiya and Matsuya? Word is still out if gyudon rival Yoshinoya will follow suit, but one thing’s clear: everybody’s winning (but the cows). [via News On Japan]

Boar rampage leaves eight hurt in Hyogo town: Even though people like to portray Japan as a hyper-futuristic megaopolis, the country still faces problems that it’s faced for centuries. One such example is wild boars, one of which ravaged a town in Hyogo prefecture, injuring eight people. No matter how advanced your country’s toilets are, it’s still hard to stop a 200lb boar. [via News On Japan]

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Why Japan is the most interesting story in global economics right now: As the yen is reaching towards ¥100 to $1 USD, people all over the world are watching intently to see what the results of Japan’s dramatic economic policies will be. Since Japan’s situation is so similar to that of other industrialized countries, its economic experiment could have huge implications elsewhere in the world. No pressure, guys! [via Twitter]

Japan outranks U.S. as world’s biggest recorded music market: After years of people screaming that the music industry is dying, Japan is showing ample evidence that it’s still very much alive and kicking. More surprising than that, Japan has not only surpassed the United States as the largest consumer of recorded music, but a lot of that is still CDs. Gotta get those AKB48 handshakes somehow!

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Japan deploys Patriot antimissile system in downtown Tokyo: As Kim Jong-un continues to throw a global temper tantrum, North Korea’s neighbors have to make contingency plans, just in case the DPRK accidentally launches a successful attack. In Japan’s case, it’s set up anti-missile system throughout the country in major cities. More advanced, robotic solutions, are undoubtedly in development as we speak. [via Reddit]
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