Japan Food Prices:

 Article Source:   https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220331/p2g/00m/0bu/006000c

Article:  

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japanese consumers are expected to face more challenges amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, as a wave of price hikes will hit essential items such as food and daily goods in the new fiscal year beginning Friday due to the rising cost of raw materials.

Since there will be changes in fiscal 2022 in some social systems closely related to people's day-to-day living, such as the lowering of the amount of public pension benefits, the rising prices are likely to squeeze socially vulnerable people like pensioners particularly hard.

For example, Megmilk Snow Brand Co., Meiji Co. and Morinaga Milk Industry Co. will raise their prices for cheese, while The Nisshin OilliO Group Ltd. and J-Oil Mills Inc. said they will increase their prices of cooking oil for household use.

Ideas:

Japanease consumers most likely will continue to see increases in inflation and at the same time, more and more companies will probably feel they have no choice but to now increase the prices of their products after years of being reluctant to increase prices as they often say consumers in Japan are very price conscious and any price increase might cause them to look for subsitute products.

The lowering of public pension benefits at this time is probably not a good idea and inflation of daily products are going up and if these people are on fixed incomes its going to make their lives even more difficult.

The Japanease government, at this time, shouldn't reduce benefits as inflation, even though its not as much as in other countries is still a lot for some groups.

Article:

Other food items subject to the upcoming price hikes include Kagome Co.'s tomato ketchup and Yaokin Co.'s "Umaibo," a popular snack meaning "delicious stick" that has been sold at 10 yen ($0.08) without tax for more than 40 years.

The new price of "Umaibo" is set at 12 yen, according to the snack maker based in Tokyo.

Regarding daily goods, factory prices of Nippon Paper Crecia Co.'s tissue and toilet paper, as well as those of some diaper products of Kao Corp. will go up.

The major transportation system in the country is no exception either.

Ideas;

Many companies look like are going to increase their prices. But by how much is the real question in terms of are they fully passing all of their increased costs to the consumer, are they doing it slowly in stages, are they only passing on some of their costs and not all.

Inflation seems to be in many if not all countries now. But its seems to be less in Japan for whatever reason. Is it becasue companies have been very reluctant to pass on their costs and have accepted smaller profit margins and also decided they will not increase the salaries of their employees as recommended by Japanese Prime Minister Kishida.

As prices begin to increase in Japan, how are the Japanese consumers going to respond or react to the prices increases. Are they going to just accept the increases as just a normal part of society now. Are they going to cut back on some of their spending. Are they going to look for subsitutes at a lower price if they can. 

Article:

East Japan Railway Co. will effectively raise ticket prices of shinkansen bullet trains during the high season, and Kyushu Railway Co. will lift the prices of some coupon tickets for the bullet trains.

Japan Airlines Co. will raise ticket prices of some domestic flights from April 15, while those of All Nippon Airways Co. have already gone up since Sunday.

Bridgestone Corp. and the Japanese arm of French tire giant Michelin will raise the prices of their tires.

Ideas:

As the pandemic, it appears, begins to trend downward, maybe many companies have been waiting to finally being to increase some of its prices as raw material prices and energy prices have been increasing for some time now.

Maybe the spring and the Golden Week period, when demand is highest companies feel its the best time and maybe customers/consumers won't be a reluctant to not buy or use the services of airline, trains, and bullet trains.

After the Golden Week period ends and things begin to get back to the day to day normal activities it will be interesting to see just how much customers and consumer begin to react to all of the prices increases in the Japanease economy.

But as the pandemic winds down, maybe people just want to get out and about and just want to do things even though prices are higher now.

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As for Japan's public pension system, the amount of benefits will decrease by 0.4 percent as wages have gone down due to the influence of the pandemic.

The age bracket to start receiving the benefits will become wider, now raising the upper age limit to 75. Currently, those aged between 60 and 70 can begin receiving a pension.

Ideas:

Its seems like the pension systems is every country, because of the pandemic and other factors, are under extreme stress.

But I don't think reducing the pensions is the best strategy at this time. Inflation might be here for a while and inflations always effects the lower income or fixed income groups the most.

It might be a very good idea, like in the US, if companies in Japan didn't have a required retierment age. Just let people work for a long as they want.

And then maybe after age 60 or 65, for example, set a limit on the salary as to not effect companies too much.

So if a person wants to continue working past 65, they can continue to work, but they aren't elgible for any more salary increases and the will remain at the same salary for as long as they continue to work for that company.

And or the employee can remain at the company with a reduced salary of say 3/4ths or 1/2 of what their salary was.

In that way, it might reduce the stress on the pension system and companies will share in the helping society and not just the government.

Have a nice day and be safe!