New Yorkers, Visit Japan Where Burger is 40% Off
A college professor from Japan with a family of four thinks twice before buying a bottle of orange juice. The family spends $15 daily for foods. The professor in his forties came in August to teach at a college in California. "Coming from a country of low currency rate, it's tough to survive here. 100 yen to a dollar should be about right", says the professor.
Tokyo has once been a city of the world's highest currency rate, but now things are different. Data compiled by Nikkei Veritas on retail prices of commodities that circulate around the world clearly indicate that Japan's daily commodities have gone down in price.
Take Nikon 7731 Digital Camera D3300, for instance. You can buy one at a Tokyo camera shop considerably cheaper than in Sao Paulo, Brazil or Istanbul, Turkey - in fact, the cheapest in 11 cities. Sony's PlayStation 4 is the second cheapest after Sydney among the cities where data are available. Sony had set a globally viable price for this product, but currency trends and competitive environment have come to give a feel of a bargain for customers in Tokyo.
A survey in late August at the Ginza shows foreign tourists feel electrical appliances and cosmetics are particularly cheap. A Chinese male in his thirties told commodities are low in price in Japan and tourists feel that way particularly when they shop tax-free.
Tourists from the western countries also feel the same way. A British couple feels nothing overly expensive except for souvenir goods, adding "Things are much more expensive at Uniqlo in London!"
Japanese tourists abroad suffer otherwise. A company staff who came to Singapore for the first time in 10 years "shrinks" at high prices of commodities. "Drinking water, canned beer, you name it - everything is incommensurably high from our sense of price", sighed he.
