About 20 years ago, I have had heard that the average price for a typical lunch meal in Japan was between 800 and 1,000 yen, which in 2004 terms, was around SGD 12 to SGD 161. That cost, in local terms, was reserved for restaurants, not hawker centres and coffee shops where the price then (by my reckoning) was around SGD 2.50 for a meal.
Fast forward today, you could still get a decent meal in Tokyo for between 800 and 1,000 yen, which is now around SGD 7 to SGD 9. Surprisingly, these price levels are almost equivalent to mixed vegetables rice (considered Singapore’s unofficial basic food index) sold at some locations.
In a way, we could describe that we had reached Japan’s level of (price) standards, but there is a macroeconomic explanation behind.
The Lost Decade(s)
Long story short, the meteoric rise of the Japanese economy post-Second World War ended with the burst of the asset price bubble in the early 1990s, sparking...