Good Old Japan

Bars without booze are starting to take off in Japan

It's one of the hottest new trends in Japan: Bars without booze. Raising glasses of non-alcoholic wine, millennial customers say they do enjoy the real thing, but only on special occasions.

"I'm not worried about my health, but I'd rather spend the money on nice meals," said student Manaka Yoshii.
Non-alcoholic bars are starting to take off in Japan, popular especially among younger Japanese. And that's giving the national government a hangover.

The so-called "sober-curious" movement has stunned officials in Japan, where much of life revolves around drinking, peaking during occasions like cherry-blossom viewing. Office drinking parties have long been considered essential to company team-building.
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At Maruku Café, bartender Suzumo Sakurai serves an underserved market: teetotallers of all ages thirsting for a local pub without the liquor. The government's drink-more campaign, he said, is tone-deaf.



"I think it's a terrible idea," Sakurai said. "It's like trying to get people to smoke more."



Japan is a group-oriented society, where getting along has often meant going along with drinking, the consequences visible on trains and city streets.



"Japan has a long tradition of bonding over alcohol. But people are starting to wise up," Sakurai said.

www.yahoo.com/news/bars-without-booze-starting-off-135950866.html

Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past

America and Europe once feared the Japanese economic juggernaut much the same way they fear China's growing economic might today. But the Japan the world expected never arrived. In the late 1980s, Japanese people were richer than Americans. Now they earn less than Britons.

For decades Japan has been struggling with a sluggish economy, held back by a deep resistance to change and a stubborn attachment to the past. Now, its population is both ageing and shrinking.

Japan is stuck.

When I renewed my Japanese driving license, the exquisitely polite staff shuttled me from eye test to photo booth to fee payment and then asked me to report to "lecture room 28". These "safety" lectures are compulsory for anyone who's had a traffic infraction in the previous five years.

Inside I found a group of disconsolate-looking souls waiting for our punishment to begin. A smartly-dressed man walked in and told us our "lecture" would begin in 10 minutes and last two hours!

You are not required to even understand the lecture. Much of it was lost on me. As it droned in to its second hour several of my classmates fell asleep. The man next to me completed a rather fine sketch of Tokyo tower. I sat bored and resentful, the clock on the wall mocking me.

"What's the point of it?" I asked my Japanese colleague when I got back to the office. "It's punishment, right?"

"No," she said laughing. "It's a job creation scheme for retired traffic cops."

The geeks and oddballs love it for its wonderful weirdness. But it also has alt-right admirers for refusing immigration and maintaining the patriarchy. It is often described as a country that has successfully become modern without abandoning the ancient. There is some truth to this, but I'd argue the modern is more a veneer.

When Covid struck, Japan closed its borders. Even permanent foreign residents were excluded from returning. I called up the foreign ministry to ask why foreigners who'd spent decades in Japan, had homes and businesses here, were being treated like tourists. The response was blunt: "they are all foreigners."

Some people joke Japan is a one-party state. It isn't. But it's reasonable to ask why Japan continues to re-elect a party run by an entitled elite, which yearns to scrap American-imposed pacifism, but has failed to improve living standards for 30 years.

tetra pods

Yes, I worry about the future. And Japan's future will have lessons for the rest of us. In the age of artificial intelligence, fewer workers could drive innovation; Japan's aged farmers may be replaced by intelligent robots. Large parts of the country could return to the wild.

Will Japan gradually fade into irrelevance, or re-invent itself? My head tells me that to prosper anew Japan must embrace change. But my heart aches at the thought of it losing the things that make it so special.
www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63830490

One prominent recent global trend is the greater-than-expected growth in food demand in China and other emerging economies. This phenomenon certainly cannot be explained simply by China’s economic rebound after the slump caused by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, Chinese imports of soybeans had climbed to an incredible 103 million tons as of 2021. Even Japan, which imports 94% of the soybeans it consumes, reached only the level of 3.4 million tons in 2019, a mere fraction of its neighbor’s total.

If Chinese purchases continue to climb, soybean exporters may no longer sell to Japan. China and other countries currently have the power to buy greater volumes at higher prices. In Japan, the cost of imported soybeans is approaching that for domestically produced varieties. Container ships are increasingly reluctant to chart routes to Japan, and ocean freight rates are soaring. Japan is already being outbid.

Japan is also 100% dependent on imports of phosphorus and potassium, needed for producing chemical fertilizers. Procurement of these was becoming more difficult due to Chinese curbs on exports, and deteriorating relations with Russia, another major world supplier, have made the outlook even bleaker. China is the top phosphate producer and Russia is fourth, while for potassium, Belarus is second, Russia third, and China fourth.

www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/g02082/