How Are Ordinary Folks Coping Money-wise in Tokyo,
the Glittering Global Metropolis?
For those of us who moved here from Japan, it’s generally the nice, pleasant things about the old country that our minds dwell on, due in part to nostalgia and memories sublimated by the passage of time. For those of the second or third generation who haven’t visited Japan, too, it’s only natural to view their parents’ or grandparents’ country as a wonderful place. After all, a whole range of “made in Japan” items from electronic goods, cars and cuisine to animation, video games and Major League baseball players is nowadays enjoying international popularity.

There’s no denying Japan-related items in the media these days tend to be flashy. In this year’s World Series telecast to many countries from the Americas to Northeast Asia, Japanese stars played on both sides—Boston and Colorado—including pitcher “Dice-K” Matsuzaka. More recently, the globally authoritative French restaurant guide Michelin awarded more stars to restaurants in Tokyo than to those in any other city, including Paris, New York and London. Michelin’s first edition on Tokyo listed 150 restaurants, giving out a total of 191 stars. Paris restaurants have a total of 65 stars in comparison. The new Tokyo guide, moreover, awarded its highest three stars to eight eateries, compared with NY’s three and London’s one. It was the result of five undercover reviewers, three French and two Japanese, taking years to visit 1,500 of Tokyo’s estimated 160,000 eateries, sampling French, Italian, sushi, kaiseki (traditional Japanese) and other cuisines.

An 82-year-old master of a sushi place in Sukiyabashi (who also won the title of world’s oldest chef) commented: “I never dreamed this would happen. I’ve just always tried to make good sushi using the freshest fish.” It had only been several months back that his eldest son was publicly skeptical about the forthcoming Michelin Tokyo guide, saying: “The French do not understand anything about sushi . . . how can they judge us?” The question is whether this publication will help in dispelling the racist, yet deep-rooted, notion that “Westerners don’t understand the essential excellence of Japanese cuisine.”

I shift my focus with a tinge of resignation from the macroscopic awe of Tokyo, the global metropolis, to the miscroscopic question of whether I could afford to eat in a three-star restaurant if I were there. The above-mentioned sushi shop’s recommended courses start at 23,000 yen per person—that’s a little over C$210. Would I go? Probably not. A top sushi place in Vancouver probably wouldn’t cost that much, although I really don’t know.

A majority of people in Japan must be ordinary folks for whom three-start restaurants might as well be on another plant. How are they coping these days? Having spent well over half of my life outside Japan, I remain curious about the day-to-day spending patterns of the folks there . . . probably because I can’t help comparing them to those of my fellow Canadians, as mercenary as it may be. “We’re getting better value for money over here,” I might think, or, other times, “I envy them for being able to buy such-and-such in neighborhood stores.”

I recently got a fascinating glimpse into one aspect of the day-to-day life in Japan in a weekly magazine article: how much pocket money working dads have, or are allowed to have by their wives as the case may be, and how they’re coping. Having surveyed 1,000 fathers, the monthly amount averaged out to 38,600 yen, which is to say about 1,200 yen a day, equivalent to 11 or 12 bucks here. The modesty of their “luxuries” and their efforts to save money make me sympathise, deeply.

One 29-year-old school staffer’s monthly pocket money is incredibly 1,000 yen ($10). His luxury is an occasional purchase of fruit-flavored drinks. An employee of a chemicals company, also aged 29, who gets 8,000 yen ($80, same calculation hereafter) considers a 200-yen canned coffee a luxury. It’s not easy to save either. An info tech company employee aged 46 gets 25,000 yen a month. To spend as little as possible on drinks, he buys tea in two-liter bottles which he stashes and consumes in small amounts. One civil servant, 42, gets 30,000 yen a month but skips lunch every day.

For many company guys, socializing after office hours is still important, but restaurant and bar bills are a source of big headaches. “Colleagues asked me to join them for nijikai (“the second session”) but I only had 200 yen left (auto manufacturing company, age 28, 20,000 yen).” That’s a toonie. “I took a kohai (a younger colleague) to lunch but the place was expensive and I didn’t have enough money. So I had to borrow from him,” laments a civil servant, 36, who gets 30,000 yen.” A sad loss of face indeed.

For residents of Tokyo and other big cities, a common pattern for trend-seekers is checking out the latest big shopping/multi-purpose complex to open, nowadays typically named “such-and-such Hills” or “such-and-such Town.” “The development of Ginza knows no end…” begins a recent article that caught my eye. A lady reporter went to check out two complexes that recently opened there. The first one, promoted as a “place of top quality,” is named Italian-sounding “Velvia” and boasts top brand name shops where an overcoat costing more than 100,000 is common. She then checks out a French café chain outlet where “a small muffin costs 400 yen and a small bun about 300 yen, which is rather inflationary.” $4 for a muffin is, yes, stiff.

Prices keep going up in Ginza, she reports and moves on to another complex that just opened, this one called “Yurakucho Itoshia (another Italo-Japanese concoction?). The key tenant here is an outlet of the well-known Marui chain of the pay-by-installment fame. (When I was a student way back then, I bought an electric guitar there on instalment for 17,000 yen, or just under US$50 at the exchange rate then.). Beholding an “elegant white tower out of character with Marui,” she enters, half resigned to encountering hiked-up price tags. But lo and behold, a stroll around the “high fashion floor” she finds prices that are not much different from Marui outlets in downmarket neighborhoods like Ueno and Kitasenju, e.g. 6,800 yen for a dress. Relieved that Marui is “still on our side, the ordinary people,” she again checks out the bakery shops and finds comfort in “people’s prices like 105 yen for cornbread.”

In “Ginza of the global metropolis Tokyo” that glitters in the eye of a country bumpkin from Vancouver like me, it’s apparently still a big deal whether a muffin or pastry costs $1 or $4. What a relief.

Speaking of confectionary, a famous Japanese cream puff chain has opened an outlet in Richmond. It’s been a big hit so far with people driving over from places like West Vancouver to join long queues. It’s an international chain with outlets in Shanghai and Hong Kong among others. Executives in New York might be Japanese American, the Richmond outlet, staffed by Japanese, is financed apparently by Hong Kong capital, and customers include a large segment of Hong Kong, Chinese and Taiwanese Canadians and recent immigrants. Such is one aspect of Metro Vancouver of the 21st Century.

It seems like the mass psychology of not wanting to fall behind the latest trends for fear of being ridiculed or missing out on good deals is stronger in competitive group-conscious Asian societies. It’s been some years since kakusa shakai, i.e. society of disparity, has become a popular term the Japanese use to describe themselves. It’s about a widespread tendency to divide people into two categories, “the winners and losers,” based on how much money they have. In this regard, thank goodness I don’t need to feel as miserable here in Canada where the spirit of individualism, of feeling “I decide what I like and don’t like for myself” is deeply rooted. Which is a better deal, a $1 dollar muffin or $2 pastry? Let us take time to ponder, in full public view.

Thank you all for reading this stuff the past year. I extend to you my Season’s Greetings and wish you a Happy New Year!

Corrections
Regarding my article Study Tour of Former ‘Little Yokohama’ 100 Years After the Anti-Asian Riots (p. 8, the Bulletin, Oct. 07), Mr Ed Suguro of Seattle, Washington, US, has pointed out two errors (see p. 9, The Bulletin, Nov. 07), so please allow me to correct them.
I wrote “Little Yokohama” to refer to pre-war Japan town in Vancouver, but it should have been “Little Tokyo.” As “Los Angeles has the largest Japanese population in the continental US and its Japanese commercial district is the largest and has always been referred to as Little Tokyo,” it was appropriate to call Powell Street, ‘the largest Japanese colony in Canada before World War II,’ “Little Tokyo,” Mr. Suguro noted. (I casually picked up “Little Yokohama” from a Canadian article, but nothing as reliable as the knowledge of a local Nikkei resident.)

The other error Mr. Suguro noted was that I wrote that the properties of Nikkei people in the US were confiscated as in Canada. But Mr Suguro pointed out that “people stored their belongings at home, churches, language schools, community halls, empty Nikkei businesses, etc.” This is of course quite a significant matter, but for now allow me to just rectify it to “confiscation occurred only in Canada.”