{"id":14150,"date":"2010-10-18T12:22:41","date_gmt":"2010-10-18T16:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=14150"},"modified":"2010-12-10T14:37:13","modified_gmt":"2010-12-10T18:37:13","slug":"wit-life-133-crisis-of-confidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2010\/10\/18\/wit-life-133-crisis-of-confidence\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #133: Crisis of confidence"},"content":{"rendered":"

WITLife<\/strong><\/em><\/a> is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>(Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shar<\/strong><\/em>es s<\/strong><\/em>ome of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.<\/strong><\/em>\"\"<\/p>\n

Many readers probably caught yesterday’s NYT cover story with the headline “Japan Goes from Dynamic to Disheartened<\/a>.”\u00a0\u00a0 This article (“Coping with Decline”) is the first in a series called The Great Deflation which will “examine the effects on Japanese society of two decades of economic stagnation and declining prices.”\u00a0\u00a0 Throughout the article all those quoted mention a “lack of vigor\/vitality” (I assume this was a translation of \u5143\u6c17\u304c\u306a\u3044 (genki ga nai<\/em>)).\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Japan serves as a cautionary tale for Western nations who are experiencing their own economic crisis and don’t want to fall into the trap of\u00a0 Japanification, “the deflation and collapsed demand that occurs when consumers refuse to consume, corporations hold back on investments and banks sit on cash.”\u00a0 Japanese in their 20’s who have only known hard times to have been labeled “consumption haters<\/a>,” as they eschew travel abroad and big-ticket items in favor of saving their money for an uncertain future.<\/p>\n

In Tokyo, the tiny dwellings that many young people live in are called “microhouses,” as these matchbox-size homes are all they can afford.\u00a0 The front page picture was of an Osaka bride, and the article discusses how weddings and other formerly over-the-top events have had to be greatly downgraded.\u00a0\u00a0 The city also has vending machines selling drinks for 10 yen, restaurants with 50 yen beer and apartments whose first month’s rent is 100 yen!\u00a0 It seems like there are many deals to be had, but even these tactics are having trouble coaxing Japanese consumers to part with their precious yen.\u00a0 Stanford University economics professor Robert E. Hall asserts that America will not have the same problem.\u00a0 “We’re not Japan.\u00a0 In America, the bet is still that we will somehow find ways to get people spending and investing again.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. Many readers probably caught yesterday’s NYT cover story with the headline “Japan Goes from Dynamic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30,18,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan-trends","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-3Ge","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14150"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15463,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14150\/revisions\/15463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}