Japanese Women Cut Salaryman's Allowance to least in 30 years

Japanese men have seen allowances wither to the least in three decades as their wives pare household spending in an economy mired in deflation.

Known in Japan as salarymen, the workers receive 36,500 yen ($452) per month for pocket money, amounting to $15 a day and the smallest amount since 1982, according to a survey by Shinsei Financial Co. released today. Japanese wives typically manage their husbands’ earnings.

Japan’s growth of less than 1 percent per year in the past 10 years has crimped pay, forcing housewives to cut back on pocket money and exacerbating the deflation that has plagued the economy for more than a decade. Wages have been dropping since the March 11 earthquake and household sentiment is near a two- year low, making a consumer-driven economic rebound less likely.

“This makes me a little sad,” said Hiroshi Miyazaki, chief economist at Shinkin Asset Management Co. in Tokyo. “It’s a result of a very long period of deflation. Unfortunately, this trend’s going to continue.”

Workers’ allowances peaked in 1990 at the height of the country’s asset and real-estate bubble, with men receiving a monthly 76,000 yen, more than double what they get today, according to the survey. Respondents in today’s report said they spend the greatest proportion of the money on lunch, dispensing an average 490 yen. That matches the price of a double cheeseburger with small fries and a drink at McDonald’s.

“People are becoming increasingly austere in their attitudes toward money,” Shinsei said in the report. It has been conducting the survey since 1979, covering responses from about 1,000 men between their 20s and 50s.

To save money, workers said they bring their own lunch to work and eat out less. Men ate out 2.9 times a month after work and spent an average 3,540 yen each time, according to the survey. That compares with more than 6,000 yen in 2009.

Pub chain Watami Co. is among businesses taking the hit from consumers’ intensifying drive to spend less. The company’s same-store sales dropped 6.4 percent in May from a year earlier, marking the fifth straight month of declines.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-27/japan-s-men-survive-on-15-a-day-as-wives-tighten-purse-strings.html

Japanese Retail Investors Going for High Yield Real Estate and Foreign Mutual Funds

The aftermath of Japan's earthquake and tsunami has seen a rare flow of money into mutual funds based on domestic equities as a bargain-hunting mood took hold, but retail investors are more focused on foreign and property-linked funds with higher returns.

Japanese retail investors, who hold some $15 trillion in personal assets, are keen to diversify so as to obtain higher returns and are showing interest in currency-select funds and those related to Brazil or offering monthly dividends.

"We've seen flows by Japanese retail investors into foreign funds since the March disaster. I don't think the general trend has changed before and after the disaster," Naohika Baba, chief Japan economist at Goldman Sachs, told the Reuters Rebuilding Japan Summit in Tokyo this week.

"A trend of retail money flowing into such funds as Brazilian funds and REIT funds is continuing," Baba said.

Japanese retail investors have poured about $5 billion into North American real estate mutual funds since March, their biggest net investment in any category of funds tracked by Thomson Reuters Lipper, boosting total assets of such funds to $20.7 billion at the end of May.

North American real estate funds domiciled in Japan produced average returns of 11.56 percent in the first five months of 2011, the data showed.

Property funds have generated strong interest in Japan's $818 billion mutual fund market over the past year, with such funds showing a strong performance as ample liquidity in the global market saw money pouring into oversold property-related funds after the Lehman shock, analysts said.
Inflows have persisted into REIT (real estate investment trust) funds, especially after the Bank of Japan started an asset buying scheme to spark the economy last year, giving a boost to shares in REIT-related companies, distribution sources said.

The asset size of REIT fund reached an all-time high of 5.0 trillion yen ($62 billion) in May, the Investment Trusts Association of Japan said in data released last week.

High-yield U.S. dollar bond funds have been the second most popular category since March, with net inflows of $4.7 billion, followed by global real estate funds, which attracted net inflows worth $4.3 billion, Lipper data showed.

"High-yield foreign corporate bond funds and currency select funds continue to draw strong interest as investors closely focus on places that are performing well," said a distribution source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

FLOWS IN JAPAN EQUITIES FUNDS
In a rare move, mutual funds that invest in Japanese equities saw their first net inflows in two years, with investors pouring money into themed funds such as those investing in firms with products related to clean energy.

Japanese equities funds that donate part of their proceeds to areas hit by the March 11 disaster also drew strong interest.

Asset managers regard retail investors as important to their business, and say they are focused on offering products that meet such demand.

"Retail investors are expected to diversify their investments by seeking opportunities abroad. We want to think how we could meet their interest," said Koichi Miyata, president and chief executive of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group.

"With regard to products, for instance, we may focus on offering foreign funds. For Japanese products, we may offer funds that focus on businesses with growth potential, and our customers also are seeking funds related to the rebuilding of Japan. Our key goal is to broaden our client base."

The $52.8 billion Japanese equity funds category has seen a revival, with investors pouring nearly $2 billion into it since March, data from Thomson Reuters Lipper showed.

The fund category had seen outflows worth about $1.5 billion in the previous nine months. Meanwhile the net asset value of these funds has fallen 9.3 percent since March.

Still, it is premature to say the market will see steady money flows into Japanese equity funds in the coming months as a stronger yen and unclear global economic prospects were expected to limit gains in Tokyo share prices, analysts said.

Uncertainty in the long-term prospects of the Japanese economy were also expected to keep curbing the enthusiasm of retail investors for domestic equity funds, they said.

The asset size of Japan mutual funds stood at 65.8 trillion yen as of May, but that was still 20 percent below the peak of 82 trillion yen set in October 2007.

"As long as the Japanese economy remains this way, the size of Japanese mutual funds is expected to stay near where it is now," Goldman's Baba said.

"But if the Japanese and global economies improve and push up share prices then they will have more room to invest. If share prices rise then investors can be more keen about taking risks and invest more," he said.


http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/06/24/us-japan-summit-retailinvestors-idUKTRE75N0OA20110624

Kawashima - Iitate and Kawamata - Residents Confirm Internal Radiation Exposure

More than 3 millisieverts of radiation has been measured in the urine of 15 Fukushima residents of the village of Iitate and the town of Kawamata, confirming internal radiation exposure, it was learned Sunday.

Both are about 30 to 40 km from the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, which has been releasing radioactive material into the environment since the week of March 11, when the quake and tsunami caused core meltdowns.

"This won't be a problem if they don't eat vegetables or other products that are contaminated," said Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Hiroshima University. "But it will be difficult for people to continue living in these areas."

Kamada teamed up with doctors including Osamu Saito of Watari Hospital in the city of Fukushima to conduct two rounds of tests on each resident in early and late May, taking urine samples from 15 people between 4 and 77.

Radioactive cesium was found both times in each resident.

Radioactive iodine was logged as high as 3.2 millisieverts in six people in the first survey, but none was found in the second survey.

The data indicate accumulated external exposure was between 4.9 and 13.5 millisieverts, putting the grand total between 4.9 to 14.2 millisieverts over about two months, they said.

"The figures did not exceed the maximum of 20 millisieverts a year, but we want residents to use these results to make decisions (to move)," said Kamada.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110627a2.html

Cumulative Radiation Exceeds 4x Annual Limit in some area outside Fukushima exclusion zone

Cumulative radiation outside the 20-kilometer radius of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the past three months has reached as high as 82 millisieverts, more than four times the yardstick of 20 millisieverts a year, a science ministry estimate showed Tuesday. 


The highest level was detected in a part of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture around 22 kilometers northwest of the nuclear plant crippled since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, according to the data compiled by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

Namie is among the designated evacuation areas lying outside of the no-entry zone where radiation levels are feared to exceed the annual limit of 20 millisieverts.

Of 160 monitoring sites in the designated areas outside the no-entry zone, 23 registered radiation levels exceeding 20 millisieverts over the three-month period, the ministry said.

Outside the areas subject to evacuation, an area in the city of Minamisoma had an estimated cumulative radiation level of 20.4 millisieverts a year since the start of the crisis.


http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9O0AP581&show_article=1

May - Visitors to Japan Plunge 50%

The number of foreign visitors to Japan in May plunged 50.4 percent from a year earlier to 358,000, the second-sharpest year-on-year fall following April's 62.5 percent drop, in the wake of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in March, the Japan National Tourism Organization said Thursday.

The rate of decline, however, has been narrowing since reaching 73 percent in the March 12-31 period following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, with foreign governments lifting advisories on travel to Japan, according to the organization.

The rate of decline in foreign visitors also slowed as travel agencies organized cheaper group tours to Japan and foreigners including those who were studying and undergoing vocational training in Japan returned to the country.

Of foreign visitors in May, the number of South Koreans plummeted 58.3 percent to 84,100 and that of Taiwanese tumbled 40.4 percent to 68,000 while that of Chinese decreased 47.8 percent to 58,700.
Comparable data has been available since January 1961.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9NST9O00&show_article=1

Tokyo starts radiation checks at 100 locations

The Tokyo metropolitan government kicked off Wednesday a weeklong program to measure radiation levels in the air at 100 locations in the metropolis in a bid to address fears over the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. 


There are one to three check points per 4 square kilometers across Tokyo, excluding mountain areas. Two groups of metropolitan government employees will take measurements at six to seven locations a day during the week, with the results published basically everyday on its website after each measurement, it said.

At a park in Toshima Ward, the first location under the program, three employees measured 0.06 microsieverts of radiation one meter above the ground and 0.07 microsieverts at five centimeters above ground, against the legal limit of 1 millisievert per year for the general public.

The move came after a number of requests from cities, towns and villages in Tokyo asking for expanded coverage of radiation measurements to the metropolitan government, as it has conducted measurements only in Shinjuku Ward.


http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9NS2S2O0&show_article=1

Yakuza Trying to Get Post EQ Fukushima Contracts

The government and law enforcement authorities appear to be fighting an uphill battle to prevent gangsters and other "antisocial" groups from cashing in on disposing of huge amounts of debris generated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which played havoc with large areas along the Pacific coast of northeastern Japan.

These groups, including not only Japan's indigenous organized crime syndicates known as "yakuza" but a mafia based in China, are seeking to win a chunk of more than ¥15 trillion estimated to be poured into reconstruction of the areas.

On May 5, in the midst of an annual holiday season in Japan, an officer of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, on his visit to Minami-Soma City in Fukushima Prefecture, which was hard hit by the calamities, was flabbergasted to find a Chinese man known as a leading figure in the "China mafia."

This man (who will be referred to as "Mr. X" in this article) is a naturalized citizen of Japan, and is engaged in the business of treating industrial waste in both Japan and China. He was giving gyoza dumplings to evacuees in shelters in an apparent bid to impress the local people with his benevolence.

But his ulterior motive is to win a contract for collecting and disposing of mountains of debris that local authorities are finding difficult to handle. Making matters worse for local residents, some of the debris near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station are contaminated with radioactive substances and therefore cannot be moved to other prefectures.

Indeed, on April 17, the municipal government of Koriyama City, Fukushima, removed contaminated surface soil from the grounds of a public school but was prevented from dumping the radioactive soil at a disposal site by local residents.

According to the Tokyo police officer, Mr. X recently visited the mayor of Minami-Soma with a DPJ Diet member apparently in a bid to win business contracts. The mayor is said to have been unaware of Mr. X's background. The same police officer says Mr. X has sites in inland China where he can dump waste. This means that should he be awarded a contract, debris, including materials contaminated with radioactive substances would be shipped to China.

The China mafia is not the only group seeking to win a deal in the debris disposal projects. On April 21, a member of the yakuza group Kodo-kai was found to be distributing cash to earthquake victims in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, and the police believe this was part of an attempt to get a contract for debris disposal. Kodo-kai is the largest group under the umbrella of Yamaguchi-gumi, which is the largest of Japan's "Big Three" organized crime syndicates.

The other two Big Three members — Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-gumi — are also stepping up their activities in the disaster region, which gives rise to the difficult question of how the three groups would split the pie in the event they win contracts, according to a newspaper reporter well versed in their actions.

Another category of "antisocial" groups is groups of people known as sokai-ya, which are corporate blackmailers unique to Japan. They extort money by threatening to publicly humiliate or embarrass companies and their executives at annual meetings of stockholders (kabunushi sokai).

One such group is said to have dispatched more than 30 workers to the stricken nuclear power station in Fukushima to work on disposal of contaminated debris. Each worker carries a Geiger counter to measure and records the levels of radiation. The group's aim, of course, is to threaten Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the nuclear station, and win compensatory money by proving that these workers have were over-exposed to radiation.

The government and the police have already launched steps to counter these antisocial forces, but their task is not easy to say the least. In late March, the National Police Agency instructed the police departments in the earthquake-hit prefectures to take measures to prevent yakuza and other antisocial groups from taking part in reconstruction projects.

On May 8, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku said in an NHK-TV program that disposal of debris, which he noted was primarily the task of the municipalities, would not work unless the central government takes direct control.

But even these steps taken by the government and the police might not prove sufficient because the sheer size of the debris and the work required could enable the yakuza to edge their way in.

One case to illustrate this point is found in a construction company in Iwate Prefecture, which was on the verge of bankruptcy prior to the March 11 disasters due to insufficient work. Although the company is now getting more work than it can possibly handle, it knows that the boom is temporary, and that, therefore, it is refraining from hiring more workers. Other construction companies are in a similar position, and, as a result, each has more work than they can handle.

In this kind of situation, the national and municipal governments cannot devote much time to carefully choosing contractors to undertake debris disposal.

The police authorities are also facing difficulties in clamping down on the yakuza groups because many of them take the form of normal business entities engaged in legitimate enterprises.

The National Police Agency is said to have distributed to prefectural police departments a list of antisocial individuals but it is not clear if the police department can fully make use of the lists in their efforts to exclude gangsters from contracts.

It appears to be an uphill battle to prevent yakuza and other crime syndicates from benefiting from the multitrillion yen reconstruction-related projects.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20110615a3.html