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Thanks for sharing, Jesper sensei! Will share with our 250 TeamFirst members.

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Danke…..

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Are there any sectors other than energy which seem to be under greater inflationary pressure in Japan than others? If so, why?

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Mark, heya -- thank you for your question (and apologies for the somewhat delayed reply...). The big inflation divergence is goods versus services -- the goods CPI is basically rising at almost 5% yoy now, but the services CPI is still modestly declining. Interestingly, modest deflation across series is fairly broad-based, from education to hairdressers to transport and hospitality.....from here, all eyes on the demand side, but I am afraid the consensus may well be right that without wage growth, demand for services is unlikely to pick-up...and unfortunately the recent pick-up in COVID numbers is keeping a lid on domestic travel demand....hope this helps ; thank you & many cheers ;-j

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Thank you for your detailed, clear response. Our family is now somewhat "addicted" to the government subsidies for travel, which have been extended until the end of August in our part of the country. It is unclear whether any of the prefectural or regional travel subsidies (kenminwari) will be extended again or whether the long-dormant national program (previously called Go-to-Travel) will be resurrected from September. If all of these campaigns to encourage domestic travel cease to exist from September and restrictions on incoming foreigners remain, then it's likely that Japan's domestic travel industry will continue to contract.

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