Tim Stay wrote about Japan's Rising Sun on April 13th at Business News.
It is true that Japan seems to have FINALLY started spending again. And now that they have, watch out! Because the Japanese have money to spend.
According to the ASAHI 2006 Japan Almanac, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications estimate that the average Japanese household has about 12,730,000 yen in savings and 6,550,000 in debt. At 117yen/$1 that is $108k in savings per household.
There are approximately 26 million households in Japan.
26 million households X $108k = A whole lot of money the Japanese have to spend on houses (well, not really - the land is pretty much saturated with houses and there is not a lot of room to build more - hence 2, 3 or sometimes 4 generations live under the same room), cars (the Japanese will buy a new car every 3-5 years) and sneakers. (The Washington Post).
It will be good for business in Japan and elsewhere when Japan really gets down to busines.
BTW, my household does NOT have $108k in the bank, so that means someone/somewhere has more than $200K in the bank.
How about you? How much savings do you have?
Very interesting. I had no idea that Japan had that much spending power. Well... I kinda did, but not really. To answer your question, I have next to nothing in my savings. And since I've been planning on visiting Japan in a few years and maybe staying there for a while (living with my relatives of course) I should start to save.
Posted by: Chris Cerezo | April 17, 2006 9:21 AM | Permalink to Comment