Unbelievably rich, yet dirt cheap...

Jun 29, 2025

Last week the always curious Maggie Lake invited me to her excellent “The Market House” podcast. It was fun & I trust you’ll enjoy the conversation:

Maggie’s executive summary of some “huh, that’s interesting” quotes from Jesper:

“Japan is unbelievably rich and has enormous resources. People always forget that this has been the world's largest creditor country for the past 37 years.”
“Japan cannot trust its two biggest partners...the People's Republic of China on the one hand...And then of course, the United States of America...And what has happened over the last five, six years is that basically both those partners...have become untrustworthy.”
“Japan's corporate metabolism is on fire.”
“Last year was the first year ever in Japan where companies hired more people mid-career rather than at the graduate intake. That's unheard of in a very, very proud human capital management culture.”
“If you switch jobs in Japan and you're in your 20s, your average pay increase is 42%.”
“This country has become an immigration superpower.”
“America always wants to have the big dramatic cycles, the boom-bust cycles. China is managing that cycle, you know, and it does have the fiscal and current account resources to actually manage that.”
“Everybody who's cool wants to move to Tokyo...there's growing evidence that you have a little bit of a brain drain to Japan, where the best and the brightest from around Asia and the United States of America actually are happy to take a pay cut...the quality of life and your purchasing power makes Tokyo, Kyoto, Fukuoka, very, very good places to live and work.”

This is Japan as you’ve (possibly) never considered it before. Recorded: June 24, 2025.

As always, comments welcome….

And, thank you Maggie for having me on your show - and I look forward to seeing you in Tokyo soon.

many cheers from an end-of-rainy-season-very-hot-&-steamy Tokyo…. ;-j

Japan Optimist