Land of the risen yen

WANNA hear a horror story? A Filipino expat makes his way to Japan to attend college. He arrives in Narita with twenty-five thousand yen in his pocket. "Hopefully, it's enough," his father said, "until you receive your first Monbusho allowance." He is met at the airport by some Monbusho bureaucrats who promptly put him in a taxi with instructions to the driver to head for a Nihongo school somewhere in Tokyo. Our hero zips through the criss-crossing maze of Tokyo's elevated expressway system. Outside the taxi window, Japan's premiere urban center spreads its concrete reach to the far horizons. But our hero's attention is elsewhere. His attention is fixed on the click clicking numbers of the taximeter beside the driver. Minutes pass and with it a thousand yen; half an hour slips by and his wallet is thinner by five thousand yen. Two hours later he arrives on the other side of Tokyo. The fare? Exactly twenty-five thousand yen. Que horror!

Welcome to the Land of the Risen Yen. Some figures to put things in proper perspective: After the Bubble Economy fizzled away, Fortune Magazine (1994) still rated Tokyo the most expensive place on the planet to eat, breath and have an address. The U.S. average then being 100, New York was a decent 108, Hong Kong slightly sacrilegious at 148. London was an understated 135. Manila? Well, it wasn't mentioned among the fifty major urban centers surveyed so let's assume home was reasonably --- well, cheap. How expensive was Tokyo? Let me whisper that .... 260.

"'Day, pakibaba ang kilay!" as a dear friend would often say. Zurich was a distant runner-up at 187.

Sigh. Of course all our expat readers in Japan already know how expensive it is to live here. The figures were for the benefit of our readers overseas. I hope the folks back home will now have a better appreciation of the superhuman effort it takes to work in a land where everything the natives say sounds like "ajinomoto" said backwards at twice the speed, to make ends meet, and still have enough leftover for remittances. If I weren't addicted to the safe streets of Japan, I'd probably have made a career change ten years back and headed straight for the U.S. where the livin' is easier.

Still not convinced? What if I tell you it costs 1,800 yen (750 pesos) for the privilege of watching a movie. Or that a haircut costs 2,500 yen (1,042 pesos). God knows how much it costs you women to have your hair cut AND permed. The minimum bus fare is 160 yen (67 pesos). Tha taxi's flag down rate is 600 yen (250 pesos), even though you might think it quaint for the taxi door to open and close automatically like that. If we stay here long enough, I wonder where we'll find the 600,000 yen (250,000 pesos) per annum for our daughter's PUBLIC university studies. Unlike most parents, the prospect of a child studying medicine does not exactly fill us with thrill, more like trepidation. The list goes on and on ...

My wife is snickering as I type this. She knows how tough it is to stretch our hard earned yen. But she has a few secrets, that's why she's smiling. Hon, would you like to share your secrets with our dear readers?

Sure why not.

Thanks Hon. I promise to do the dishes later.

So there you have it, dear readers. In next month's column -- the secret of living cheaply in Japan -- straight from the horses' mouth.

Araguy! Hon, mahal ang doctor's fees dito.*

Dexter Lee is the pen name of a husband-and-wife team writing out of the suburban sprawl of the Kanto area. After coming to Japan in 1985 for a bachelor's degree, Dexter stayed on till his Ph.D. in Engineering. Their column is a compilation of their domestic experiences in Japan.

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