Category: Econ & Business

Curse you, yen!

When I was packing up to leave Japan at the end of the summer, I checked the forward rates to see if it would be worth it to change my leftover yen (a pretty big chunk of money) back into dollars. The 6-month forward was pretty stable back then, so I took my Japanese cash home with me and stashed it away.

Well, that was one hell of a mistake. The yen is now down from 110 to 120 to the dollar, with not much sign of coming back up, and Finance Minister Tanigaki and BoJ President Fukui don’t seem to have a problem with the situation. Bastards.

My new life in Japan


Conversation I had with MF a few weeks ago while we were taking a look at Japanese satellite TV operator SkyPerfecTV’s channel offerings:

MF: you should just quit your job and fly to japan next week
MF: screw the apartment
Adamu: dont tempt me
MF: you can get a job at nova
Adamu: haha
MF: and then go home to your sweet, sweet tv
Adamu: ok now that IS sad
MF: and a big can of kirin
MF: or asahi dry
Adamu: asahi
Adamu: id have to have a good tv
Adamu: maybe i could get those tv goggles
Continue reading My new life in Japan

Drinking on the job just got a whole lot healthier?

beer yeast pills?

Saw this in an ad for “Asahi Super Beer Yeast” from the Nikkei.

Fortified with vitamins and minerals! This is the oyaji equivalent of marketing sugared cereals as “part of a balanced breakfast.”

One may recall my post on this topic a while back.

Two possibilities: a) His comments weren’t accidental at all but a strange form of viral marketing; or b) Someone at Asahi got the idea for this after his comment and possibly other propaganda started creating a buzz for healthy effects of beer. Hell, they already sell “Diet” happoshu.

The popularity of these “snake-oil” products in Japan simultaneously fascinates and infuriates. They clearly have no medical value but are popular in part due to the deep belief by many Japanese people in superstitions like the ability of blood type to determine personality. Even those who don’t buy in still know their blood type and know how to work it into a conversation. It may be sapping the time and energy of Japan’s biggest drug companies, but it sure is fun to watch.

That is not to say Americans are free from this parasitic organic supplement craze. Look at this ad for “brewer’s yeast” (spelling errors corrected):

Brewer’s Yeast is an excellent source of protein and several B-vitamins.

It is produced by cultivation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae on malted barley in the production of beer. After fermentation, the yeast is separated from the beer, roller dried and debittered.

Why not just eat food with protein and B-vitamins in it? I’m not an expert, so I’d appreciate the opinion of anyone knowledgable in the medicinal benefits of yeast (I mean, I thought it caused infections?!)

The economics of language learning

Following up on the last post, chew on this: although there are plenty of languages that seem useful, there is no rational reason for you to learn most of them.

Of course, it’s very rational (in fact, often unavoidable) to learn a language when you have no choice—if you live or work where that language is all that’s spoken. That’s part of the beauty of exchange programs and cross-cultural romance. But beyond that, you’re better off hiring a translator or interpreter when you need one: it’s much cheaper, and likely to be just as effective.

That’s why Americans rarely learn foreign languages: the benefits simply aren’t there. That’s also why children learn languages “more easily” than adults: they have much less choice in the matter, especially if their peers are speaking a different language. Adult professionals, like the aforementioned lawyers in Tokyo, can just outsource their language needs, and save a lot of time and money by doing so.

So what accounts for those of us who learn languages for the hell of it (including the authors of this blog)? Basically, we’re nuts. Not thinking things through. I love knowing Japanese and I keep learning more, but it hasn’t been particularly useful in my life, except when haggling with electronics dealers in Den-Den Town. Yet I keep learning it, probably because the amenities in Japan are so tempting, and, like most Westerners who know Asian languages, I have way too much fun flaunting the skills (what Jay Rubin calls the “look, Mom! I’m reading Japanese!” effect).

On the other hand, a professor of mine, who loves Japan enough to spend a few months teaching there every other year or so, has stopped bothering with language classes. For him, there isn’t much necessity: his family speaks English, his classes are taught in English, and a couple of lines from a phrasebook are all he needs to order lunch or locate an English speaker. Maybe if he were dropped into a high school classroom in Osaka, he would start figuring out those characters.

One of my favorite analyses on this issue comes from amateur linguist/online ne’er-do-well Mark Rosenfelder, who wrote a nice, meaty article on the “how”s and “why”s of language acquisition, and reached the same conclusion: language learning almost always comes from necessity, and the exceptions can be counted as strange obsession. So before you go off to learn a language for kicks, consider what your obsession is.

On language skills in the Tokyo legal market

If you head to Japan to find a legal job, you’ll realize something pretty quickly: What school you went to, what you did there, and what work experience you have, all trumps your Japanese ability. Easily. A person from a top-20 school who speaks no Japanese at all is miles ahead of a person from a second or third-tier school who’s totally fluent.

That’s not to say language doesn’t matter at all. It can save an otherwise crappy resumé (mine comes to mind), and it can qualify a person for a better job. If you have an Ivy League degree and speak Japanese, the town is your oyster. But it’s not nearly as important as the other qualifications that law firms look for back in the US.

I used to think this was just a matter of priorities: firms value nice schools over language ability, since the schools woo clients more easily, there’s no shortage of translators and interpreters to bridge the language gap, and many Japanese clients don’t expect to see a gaijin speaking their language anyway. No doubt all of these factors play a role.

But I was recently talking to a seasoned lawyer from a big American firm in Tokyo, and he said that language skills can actually be a problem for many clients. That made no sense to me, so I prodded him on. “It’s actually pretty simple,” he said. “In many cases, they don’t want you to know everything that’s happened on their side of the case. If you know Japanese, you have a way of independently finding out. So if you don’t know Japanese, they figure they have more control over you.”

So what’s the best solution? Know the language, but don’t make the fact readily apparent?

Sociopolitical progress goes “moo”

The world explained by cows. A classic. My favorites:

CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

HONG KONG CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the right to all seven cows’ milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because of bad feng shui.

Shorter, and therefore less awesome, versions have floated around the ‘net for a while. What can I say, I’m a late adopter.

Down with the airport security overlords!

One of Marmot’s recent posts confirmed that the Transport Security Administration (TSA, also rumored to be an abbreviation for “Thugs Standing Around“) is the biggest waste of money and time since the lawyer was invented. I would make an argument about how none of our airport security procedures would be sufficient to stop a terrorist attack on an airplane, but it’s more fun to point out random gripes from across teh intarweb:

  1. There are too many of them where they aren’t needed.
  2. They have a ridiculous no-fly list that appears to be based on Arabic names.
  3. They piss off foreign government officials who return to their countries determined to undermine American foreign policy.
  4. They lead to wives taking the fall for their husbands and penises taking the fall for their owners.
  5. They are cruel to robots and people traveling on a different airline each way (I can confirm this personally).
  6. They can’t decide whether shoes are optional or not, but they make you take your shoes off anyway.
  7. Besides nail clippers, they also take away bowling pins and thongs.
  8. Even though they inexplicably force you to show your boarding pass twice, people can STILL get onto planes without tickets.
  9. For an agency designed to thwart terrorists, they have a funny way of involving themselves in the War on Drugs.
  10. And half of these procedures can be avoided completely if you have money.

Oh yes… there’s now a mobile phone game where you win by beating TSA security at every major airport in the US. Fun times.

Granted, they aren’t quite as dastardly as Japanese Customs…

The pitfalls of the furry bra

At the risk of looking like Japundit, I present the Triumph® Heated Bra™, designed in response to the Warm Biz campaign.

This prompted a discussion with my friend “K.” As it turned out, she was an expert on furry bra physics:

[11:05] K: you know, i saw that earlier today and it doesn't make sense
[11:06] J: yeah... i imagine that boobies don't get that cold
[11:06] K: well, if it WERE that cold out... it's hard to wear a shirt over a furry bra
[11:06] K: but if it's warm enough for no shirt, then you don't need a warm bra!
[11:06] J: stop hating on the furry bras
[11:07] K: i don't hate it, but i'm saying that they didn't think it through
[11:07] K: like, it might be nice at a january football game
[11:07] J: yes
[11:08] K: but you're more than welcome to wear one
[11:08] J: mmmm fur
[11:09] K: it's like that diamond-encrusted bra... it's just... not comfortable!

UPDATE: I later showed this to a Japanese ladyfriend, “M.” Her response, in its entirety:

[10:46] M: that is pretty

Another airport in Tokyo?

Narita has expanded as far as it can go. Haneda, already the busiest airport in Asia, can’t go anywhere but further into the bay. Tokyo will eventually need a third airport, or so we’re told.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government, with Ishihara’s personal blessing, wants to use Yokota Air Base, a U.S. Air Force base in west Tokyo, for civilian flights. That seems somewhat unlikely now, since the base is going to have expanded duty as the Air Self-Defense Force’s command center (protests be damned), on top of its existing role as headquarters for U.S. forces in Japan.

The other option is to build offshore. Several sites have already been proposed, most of them in Tokyo Bay, except for one site off of the Kujukuri Beach on the Pacific coast of Chiba (obviously a bad idea; spoil a nice beach with an airport that’s even farther from Tokyo than Narita?!).

Is the third airport really necessary? After all, Narita just had to cut its landing fees to stay competitive. I think it all has to do with the fact that the Kansai region will have three airports as of next February. Ishihara just doesn’t want his half of Japan to fall behind.

London has five airports and is getting along just fine. That doesn’t mean that more is necessarily better. Berlin is in transition from three airports to just one. Maybe Tokyo will someday admit that Narita was a dumb idea, and run all of its flights from a humongous future version of Haneda, acres and acres of concrete sprawling out into the bay.

Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride

Even though this post has nothing to do with toads or amusement parks, I chose the title in keeping with the anurian theme of this blog. But boy, wouldn’t this month’s Nikkei 255 make one hell of an exciting coaster ride?

January Nikkei

I smoothed the line just for a more pleasing visual effect, but the bounce back from the “Livedoor Shock” is clearly official. In fact, for the past two days the Nikkei 225 average has closed at highs not seen since September 2000.

Lacking the sophistication to explain the reasons behind this (and having had it correctly pointed out to me over the weekend that I am wont to jump to unsupported conclusions about Japan) I’m going to defer to the opinion of the “professionals” on interpreting this one. Analysts are citing several factors for the latest rally.

First, a nmber of positive economic indicators appear to have improved the confidence of investors. Starting with the labor market, employment data for December showed a marked improvement, with the ratio of job offers to job seekers balancing out at one to one, the highest it’s been since September 1992. The unemployment rate fell an additional 0.2 percent, to 4.4. percent, the lowest level in seven years.

Housing figures also look promising. Starts in 2005 rose for the third strait year, up 4% to 1,236,122.

Industrial production also rose by 1.4% (seasonally adjusted) in December.

Finally, gains by individual companies also seem to have played a roll.

A fall in the yen-dollar exchange rate has been a boon to profits of exporters such as Toyota, Honda and Advantest, all of whom closed higher on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, rising oil prices equal increased profits for companies like Nippon Oil and AOC Holdings, Inc.

Looked at as a whole, all of these figures (except perhaps for the higher oil prices) appear to suggest movement towards a stronger economy – higher corporate profits, more hiring, and increased consumption, etc…

But, while those factors are fine for institutional investors who have the resources to pay anti-social quant jocks to stare at computer monitors all day while mentally multi-tasking the application of Einstein’s general theory of relativity to global securities markets. But what about individual investors? The average Tanaka on the street, punching trades into his cell phone?

Well, in my humble, albeit relatively uninformed opinion, these guys might be basing their investment decisions on this:

Nikkei 225

Now, aren’t you sorry you didn’t buy in last fall?