2010-01-25 (Monday) by Gregory Tucker.

This article does justice to cold brew coffee, though it neglects to mention you can buy the Toddy system for about $30, plus $10 for some extra reusable filters.

Pour 9 cups of water over 1.5 to 2 lbs of medium-ground coffee and let sit for 8-12 hours. No stirring necessary. The Toddy system includes the glass decanter for refrigerating and pouring the condensed coffee. It stays fresh for about 2 weeks. On serving mix about 1 part cold brew with 2 parts water and ice, suited to taste and served on demand.

In general cold brew is more refreshing in the summer, but it is superior to hot-brew coffee in all seasons. The Japanese call this ice coffee and offer it frequently in coffee shops, vending machines, and grocery stores without or without sugar added. The Japanese ice coffee sold in the supermarkets around Portland include only the sugar-added variety, which is inferior in taste.

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2008-04-29 (Tuesday) by Gregory Tucker.

Here is my reply to a Three Asian Giants story in Economist.

The low levels of inward FDI in Japan surprised me. I made a living (and a bucket of cash) off foreign companies who were investing in the Japanese market, primarily in the banking sector in Tokyo. I have deep “street level” view of the business environment in Japan, but I never studied any of Japan at an academic level. However, the explanations in the Economist.com Three Asian Giants article were not consistent with my street-level view.

In fact, my first impression was the authors were repeating (ad nausium) commonly held misconceptions of Japan. You see this a lot when you spend a little time in Japan. One foreign journalist who doesn’t speak a lick of the Japanese language printed something in the 1960s, which gets repeated thousands of times for decades by other journalists, most of whom have never stepped foot in Japan and might struggle to locate the country on a map. Think of a Shakespearean comedy of errors routine, and you can imagine what is printed about Japan by foreign journalists.

Meanwhile change in Japan is deceptive: it appears where we do not expect it, and it fails to appear where we expect it the most. It turns out, my gut reaction may not have been completely incorrect.

This article makes a few observations:

1. Japan is a relative late-comer on the international scene, and lags in both inbound and outbound FDI, relative to its economic size. The currency was not fully convertible until 1972. Only after the economy grew in the 1960’s and 1970’s did Japan have sufficient management talent to engage in outward FDI. Weaker currency also contributed to Japanese preferences for exporting over FDI. However, outward FDI grew rapidly from US$2.4 billion in 1980 to US$50.5 billion in 1990.
2. A lot of research shows that inward FDI levels in Japan are very low. However, an analysis of employment statistics shows that employment by foreign-owned entities, depending on the definition, is much higher than generally reported, or about 50% the equivalent levels for manufacturing and service sector employment in the United States. One contributor has been the lack of cross border M&A activity, which is the preferred method of FDI in other countries, resulting from both government regulation and shareholding structures in Japan.
3. In the manufacturing sector, inward FDI is highly concentrated in chemical industry, including pharmaceuticals, and machinery industries, including motor vehicles and parts. These industries are knowledge intensive. Low levels of inward FDI in other manufacturing sectors suggests foreigners are investing in areas where Japan has comparative advantage. Foreign ownership in automobile and parts manufacturing is probably higher in Japan than in the United States.
4. Government regulation plays a bigger role in inward FDI in the service industries. Investments are concentrated in telecommunications, insurance, banking, and business services, which are the centers of government liberalization in Japan. However, low penetration in other sectors such as construction & civil engineering, energy, and utilities are probably the result regulatory barriers in general, not ones specifically aimed at foreigners ownership or inward FDI.
5. One impediment to inward FDI is the commonly held belief that the Japanese market is hard to penetrate.

High costs for labor and real estate, especially since 1980, may also contribute to low level inward FDI. Nevertheless, the Japanese market is significantly more transparent and easier to penetrate than China.

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2006-11-10 (Friday) by Gregory Tucker.

NEW YORK (Kyodo) Japan is the seventh best place to live on the planet, according to the U.N. Development Program.

Japan moved up four spots in the 2006 standard of living survey, released Tuesday, from its position at No. 11 last year, when it fell out of the top 10 for the first time since the survey began in 1990. The upward move appears to be due to the country’s recent economic recovery.

Norway topped the list for the sixth consecutive year. Iceland came in second place, followed by Australia, Ireland, Sweden, Canada, Japan, the United States, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

The survey covers 177 countries and regions, measuring average life expectancy, education, literacy, the gross domestic product per capita and other factors, to calculate the Human Development Index. Japan’s highest position was in 1999, when it was fourth.

This is an interesting development that doesn’t surprise me. Non-Japanese tend to think of crowded trains and rabbit-hutches passing for houses, but Japan has so many different things to offer than just what Americans think is important. Unfortunately, if you haven’t lived there, it can be difficult to understand.

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