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Comment by superdisk | Hacker News Reader

I'm currently in Japan and get paid in USD. Prices are insane, you can get a really nice lunch for like 5 bucks. A tall can of coke is 70 cents. It was even more cheap a few weeks ago when 100 yen was 67 cents.

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> "I currently in x and get paid in USD"

is currently a great place to be

For now.

I think this will lead to the end of the petrodollar eventually. The world won't put up with it forever.

Unlikely in the foreseeable term, not because the world loves dollars, but because there are few good alternatives. Euros are probably the best alternative, but studies have suggested that the US is a better place for holding assets. See, for example, https://www.nber.org/digest/apr20/why-euro-hasnt-become-inte...

Money keeps flowing into the US because it is perceived as safer.

What will we use.... Euros? Renmenbi? Lol

China proposed using SDRs before.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/11/debunking-the-petrod....

... for x != USA.

My brother is in Japan at the moment and has the opposite situation. He's paid in JPY and had saved up a fair bit of cash over the past couple years. The value has fallen tremendously and since he's moving back to the states in a few months he's trying to spend it all locally before he leaves. He floated the idea of buying a bunch of PS5s and stuffing his suitcase with them to resell when he gets back to the US. This would work but they are bulky and would likely raise some eyebrows at customs. We're still looking for ideas on how to get money out without too much of a haircut.

I think you're onto it with electronics, but maybe smaller higher-value ones like iPhones would work better. Also, watch out for electronics which only have Japanese language options (or can't be changed without flashing the ROM) - i.e some cameras.

Video cards would probably be a better option.

> We're still looking for ideas on how to get money out without too much of a haircut.

Luxury watches. Buy a Rolex and then wear it home. You can probably move up to $100,000 in a single watch with something like a steel Daytona.

Strange, I was always under the impression that Japan was super expensive. Maybe that's just getting there and the popular tourist destinations.

Japan was super expensive 30 years ago when I lived there and had the perspective of a broke student. But the prices in yen haven't changed in those 30 years, and prices in dollars have gone down slightly. Don't you wish you could pay 90's prices today? You can, just go to Japan!

You and I should swap stories sometime. I tell my kids that when I lived there thirty years ago, also as a broke student, that I would load up on pickled ginger when I went out to sushi with friends because it was free (along with the warm towel and the bill.)

I've always heard the opposite - that things like food and housing are quite cheap for a developed country. As long as you aren't expecting those things to be Western-style.

I remember as a child (in the late nineties?) reading something about a new ferry transit or some kind of new transportation where a cup of coffee cost ¥300? I have never been to Japan so my math is JPY 100 = USD 1 so three dollars for a coffee which sounds expensive, right?

It is one of the weird things that get stuck in my head for no reason. No idea why I was reading random local news from Japan.

Housing doesn't seem overly cheap to me if you are looking at equivalent floorspace.

> housing are quite cheap for a developed country

you must be joking.

No, the poster is not. We're talking about the world's third largest economy by GDP, and I have first-hand experience with being on the market for Japanese real estate, today. You want to hear a joke? Try San Francisco Bay Area. Then look at the price of a house in Tokyo.

And my God, the construction, convenience, and technology of Japanese houses beats the living crap out of the shoddy construction you see in the Bay Area. Do you get less usable land square-meters wise to some degree? Sure. But if you can concede some of that, the deal is way better because of the quality of life you can achieve.

Japanese real estate is a minefield (https://catforehead.com/2022/11/09/planned-obsolescence/)

That article: Yawn. Couldn't care less about what it has to say.

I'm interested in Japanese houses because I want to live in it like a regular human being, for today. I'm not inerested in buying a house in San Jose because I have moral and ethical beliefs against propping up the housing-as-an-investment industry as if I'm some kind of investor.

Housing (per sqft relative to income) in Japan is cheap if you're making American wages.

Anything anywhere is cheap if you're making American wages.

That's how the empire works.

I don't think London is cheap, American wages or not.

London is also part of the imperial core.

Yikes there is no empire

Housing is typically cheaper in Japan because:

1. Depopulation

2. Efficient zoning laws

3. Rapid depreciation of home value over time due to natural risks(earthquake etc) and cultural norms

> Depopulation

Tokyo has been growing at a much faster rate than NY or LA.

Yes it used to be expensive in the 90's but it stayed flat while the rest of the world saw inflation especially in housing.

And yes, if you see it as a touristic destination it's not cheap, just as doing tourism in NYC isn't cheap at all.

IME being there for a month, the public transportation costs add up but food and housing (provided you stay at cheap-ish hotels) are extremely reasonable unless you're constantly getting the fanciest meals.

He's being paid in USD.

A 500yen lunch isn't unheard of outside Tokyo, so even at 1 cent to 1yen that was doable.

Even inside Tokyo, that’s very typical for a nice lunch set in an average restaurant.

No it's not. I went there four years ago the average was 1000-2000 yen for the bare minimum at a small shop for below average food. Stop trying to make japan sound like a fantasy world, it isn't.

I’ve lived here for years, not just visited. There are countless restaurants where you get a basic lunch set for ¥500. You’re either going to the wrong places or talking about dinner.

The same places with the ¥500 lunch sets will cost far more at dinner. The cheap lunch is to capture some revenue from the daytime salaryman crowd.

Again, it is not. I don't know why you're fabricating these claims but well I guess it's easy to confuse that with a cheap 7-eleven meal if you've only been there once. Which is probably where you're making up these claims. The reality is that the food quality of these meals are subpar and well for it's price you're paying for what you get. But it's easy to confuse food quality of dishes that are unfamiliar to you so I'll just take it as someone pretending to be an expert rather than maliciousness.

Maybe “nice” is what triggered you? I’m not talking about fancy meals here, just soba, basic fish set, rice bowl, etc. There were like four options within one block of my last office.

And here’s a random list that comes up first on Google; there were plenty of more lists below it:

https://retty.me/theme/100014608/

Edit: Or maybe it was “very typical” that triggered you? That might have been too strong. You can’t expect it everywhere, but it’s common enough to be expected and not at all surprising.

I live in Japan too. If you drop into a random restaurant it’s most probably going to be around 1000 jpy. You can find food for cheaper but as low as 500 jpy is going to take time to find.

I’ve got a two week visit end of Feb and the prices for hotels alone are pretty surprising.

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