Coming back to Japan after two years in Korea I really expected the price of imported food to have gone down, seeing as that had happened in Korea and here there is also the high yen. Quite the reverse, however. Here are the only explanations I could come up with:
– As I wrote in my last post, one tactic of the importers was to undercut local retailers by importing and so missing out the middle men. They now seem to have mainly switched to selling imported foods and luxury premium goods, possibly because unlike the rest of the us, the rich are getting richer.
– I also have a feeling that those same middle men they were trying to avoid have now got involved, which would also explain why all imported shops have virtually the same goods nowadays.
– Unlike Korea, there has been virtually no liberalizing of trade