Japan | the past 12 months

#2 Trends

Over the past 12 months it was noted that…
• It became harder to gripe about how pricey Tokyo is as the city officially lost the title of most expensive to Moscow.
• Men’s beauty treatments went from strength to strength. Girdles for men were hot sellers.
• Japanese grannies got global economists worrying about what might happen to the world economy if they bring home the $2.5 trillion of savings they have invested overseas now that interest rates are higher.
• The new economy went out of fashion as the two top players of the “money game,” Takafumi Horie of Livedoor and Yoshiaki Murakami of the so-called Murakami Fund, were locked up.
• Speed dating parties were seen as a way to halt the falling birthrate, and were even subsidized by the government.
• Companies embraced the gray consumer. Lawson opened a convenience store for the elderly (brown décor, easy-to-read price tags, blood pressure monitors); Louis Vuitton started planning a range of products for pensioners.