This persistent disparity between wage growth and inflation threatens to dampen domestic consumption, a key driver of the Japanese economy.

Adding to concerns about the nation's economic health, household consumption in Japan has contracted for twelve consecutive months on a real basis. This extended decline coincides with a wave of price hikes implemented by businesses across various sectors. Companies grapple with rising import costs, wages, and raw material expenses, which they are increasingly passing on to consumers. This squeeze on purchasing power is likely to disproportionately impact middle-class households, potentially jeopardizing the long-held image of Japan's superior quality of life. 

The ongoing erosion of consumer spending threatens to dampen economic growth and heighten concerns about long-term stagnation.  The government will need to monitor the situation closely and consider potential policy responses to ease the burden on households and stimulate broader economic growth. Please do leave a comment below on what you would do if you were Mr. Ueda, the current Governor of the Bank of Japan, or better yet, Mr. Yukio Kishida, the Prime Minister of Japan.  Love to hear your thoughts!

I recently met with a water desalination professor from the University of Tokyo, who is currently developing a new way to desalinate water, without using electricity, but only the natural power of the sun. The technology is still under development but should be ready by 2024 or 2025. Though production volumes will only be liken to a 2L bottle of water, the ability to produce potable water through natural means was quite noteworthy, so I thought I would mention it a post.  Thank you all for reading!

After interviewing hundreds of thousands of participants across the world, a report was compiled that ranked and rated various values by country and compiled them in the following report.  As a resident of Japan, it was surprising to see Japan as one of only 5 countries out of the 94 surveyed, that ranked leisure as their top priority after family.  Finland's capital, Helsinki, which was ranked #1 for work-life balance doesn't strike me as surprising, but Japan?  Not knowing exactly how the questions were phrased and interpreted, nonetheless it was a very interesting read that I thought I might share and point out to interested readers.  

I recently read a document out of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in Japan that describes some of the government's ambitions and strategies surrounding 5G.  It was interesting to read a statement where, "it is important for Japan to become a cornerstone of the global open innovation ecosystem in the development and usage of Beyond 5G," with the goal of the strategy being to "strengthen Japan's international competitiveness in Beyond 5G (with the aims of a Beyond 5G infrastructure market share of 30%, including software, and to strengthen international competitiveness in terms of sectors for devices and Beyond 5G platform usage field)."  (p 3/10). 

The recent Hitachi acquisition of Mobile Logic for nearly $10 billion USD seems to be in alignment with this ambition but Japan seems to still be a long ways away from this 30% market share with 5G Infrastructure market expected to be worth north of $47 Billion by 2027, according to a recent Markets and Markets report.  The major players in this space include Huawei, China Mobile,  Ericsson, Samsung, Korea Telecom, SK Telecom, Nokia, ZTE, CISCO, AT&T, Juniper, T-Mobile, VMware, Verizon, HP, Alpha Networks, and possibly NEC among others.  Consequently, with all this global competition, the Japanese government's goals, which though admirable, also seem a bit unrealistic,  considering Japan's historically and currently rather insular, arguably closed mindset (though open on the surface). 

Thankfully, Japan, in particular the citizens of Japan, have a very positive and respectful image to the outside world, in general.  The government's ratings and their recent digital scorecard rankings, according to a McKinsey report, however, is cause for concern.  One of our goals, at Ezer, is to help help facilitate and foster Japan's global competitiveness, while also creating win-win scenarios for various stakeholders who are interested in the regional initiatives & agendas, from environmental and supply chain sustainability, the circular economy, continued adoption of SDGs, to fair trade practices,  ultimately contributing towards improved quality of life both regionally and globally.  

For the past year, it has been remarkable to see how much market share the Android OS has absolutely dominated the mobile OS space, with the next closest OS, iOS, less than half the share that Google's Android currently occupies.  Obviously, if we are not allocating resources, efforts, and time towards either learning, developing, and incorporating Android technology or applications into our existing systems or improving our abilities to embed and integrate or interoperate with the Android system, we are unequivocally placing themselves at a disadvantage and missing out on a 1.36 billion global smartphone market.  Secondly, the next takeaway is how this market is geographically based in Asia, which logically aligns with the global population proportionately largest in Asia, where over 2/3 of the global population resides.  

This useful MacroTrends chart helps you visualize the percentage loss in jobs from the previous peak for all recessions back to 1943. The y-axis shows the percentage change in the BLS non-farm payrolls number and the x-axis shows the number of months until the previous peak was reached again. The solid blue line shows the current percentage job losses in the U.S. due to the coronavirus pandemic.

This visual depicts the share of vaccine doses purchased by various countries, including Covax, a global initiative that brings together governments and manufacturers to ensure that eventual Covid-19 vaccines reach those in greatest need, whoever they are and wherever they live.  Very cool!