The article says this has been running since 1963 though. The program would’ve been running through the post-war period of economic growth, as well as during the lost decades.
Yakult ladies aren’t classified as full-time employees, but kojin jigyo usha (roughly “sole proprietors”), essentially making them owners of bicycle-sized franchises. They purchase product from Yakult and make a profit based on what they can sell. Yakult says the average earnings of a Yakult lady are roughly $682 USD a month, compared to an average of $1,774 per month for Japanese women broadly. In Yahoo Answers forums, Yakult ladies claim wildly different profits: Some say they work only three hours a day and make more than the company average. Others claim to work far more, selling roughly $2,700 worth of product in a month to take home about $600, roughly a 22 percent cut.
...
As I left the Yakult center, my baby clamoring for her nap, I felt oddly disillusioned — not by the women themselves, or even the no-nonsense manager, but by the corporate trappings of their work. Before I looked into it, I had swallowed the lighthearted, easy glow of Yakult’s promotional videos, which recalled my own experience when I was a kid. I would like to believe selling probiotic milk drinks is just an aside to Yakult ladies’ main mission of maternal care in the community. In the fluorescent lighting of the Yakult center, I saw their labor.
Thank you for sharing that literary and well-observed piece of writing. It is evocative and contemplative, a timely counterpart to TFA, and it is indeed excellent. I’d second your suggestion to others.
I'm so glad I visit different countries to see what they are actually like so I don't get brainwashed into thinking GDP is anywhere near of good measure as people think it is.
It’s not that GDP is a poor measure, just that it is isolated as the only measure most policy is based on improving rather than being one metric in a portfolio of related metrics that balance technological progress, accumulation of wealth, and human thriving.
As Gary Stephenson rightly points out the culture of Economics in modern practice is not one of open query and scientific skepticism, but of proselytizing. More akin to a religion than a science.
GDP just measures the average wealth of a society, on the assumption that production equals consumption. Wealth is unambiguously good, but of course it fails at measuring the full extent of human flourishing.
My take on Economists is that they keep desperately trying to make people understand that prices are set by supply vs demand dynamics, while society keeps refusing to understand it.
Is wealth the right term here? I thought it was supposed to measure production, with the actual measurement usually spending (with qualifiers). And, when comparing countries, you have to account for the different currencies. Currencies are typically trade balanced, which gives a rough equivelence for buying power, but that is not true with the dollar because, as the effective reserve currency, it has international demand outside of trade.
I suspect that the US having better investment opportunities than other countries (tech companies for example) might be more important than reserve currency status.
People tend to pay more attention to trade than investment, but investment flows are just as important. A trade deficit often means that foreign investors are buying and a trade surplus goes along with people investing in foreign countries.
I moved to Japan and have taken what is now almost a 50% wage decrease on account of the collapsing yen, but my life quality easily doubled compared to Norway. For every year I stay, finances will be more painful if I move back. But permanent residency sure sounds a lot more attractive. YMMV if you're from more interesting places
- Nice things are within walkable distance living in a major city. In Norway we live mostly in suburbs. Living in the city is unaffordable. Zoning matters. Being able to just walk out of my apartment and do things spontaneously in my own area is a life changer. I can't describe how much the change in mindset from "I'll do a half day trip into town" to "I'll pop two train stops over" did for me
- private individuals can still afford to run their own stores and cafes. In Oslo it's all commercial "food concepts" and chains. Authentic is unwanted - a Japanese restaurant trying to be authentic was recently kicked out of their place recently for not cutting corners to make a good enough profit - the property owner took a % of every sale + alcohol sales and wasn't happy, so they fabricated reasons to cancel the contract. Eating out in Japan is affordable even on a Japanese salary and I have access to basically any cuisine you can imagine - and the foreign food is often made by immigrants from that country (with some exceptions). In Norway the biggest thing in tacos is currently a Swedish chain. In Japan I can befriend my local restaurant owners.
- niche interests are hard in Norway. Everyone in your circle shows up for the once a year interesting artist that isn't already a huge pop artist on a LiveNation tour. Tariffs are high (yes, watching the whole "who pays tariffs" debate has been mind numbing), effectively 25-50% including fees, so you feel punished for being interested in anything not local. Which is everything.
- public transport in Japan is generally great. public transport in Norway is horrible. The goal is to be rich enough to avoid it and just drive, even if parking in the city is easily 50$ for a few hours if you are unlucky. Delays all the time, but no fixes, just finger pointing. They stopped publishing statistics on how often trains were late, and didn't classify cancelled trains as delayed when they did publish stats. It's all just lies and deception to try to stop the public from being mad.
- I have access to basically all the culture I want, both Japanese and western. Everyone wants to stop by Japan. Not Norway. local culture in Norway is better than before but still pretty dead. Everyone just consumes American culture. There are cool Norwegian bands and a few good movies but that's about it. When I say this I am often asked "isn't Norway a heavy metal country" and yes sure, but it is still a small niche. I don't know anyone my age who partakes.
- the Norwegian hobby is football, walks in nature, or alcohol. I read somewhere that Norwegians drink as much Brits, but in a single weekend instead of averaged over a week. It makes sense to me. All my non tech friends' hobbies were basically going out and getting hammered. There are of course other hobbies and this is slight hyperbole to make a point, but in general everyone just gets drunk. 200 years ago there probably wasn't much better to do during winter, go figure. Alcohol is also a very big hobby in Japan, probably bigger than Norway. But there's more things outside alcohol as well.
- loads of crime in Oslo, recently a lot of youth violence, including random robberies with stabbing. Much less of that in Japan. In Japan I will frequently find myself walking streets at night with women I do but know when I'm heading home. In Norway female friends would often call me in those situations just so they could communicate to the stranger that someone would know if they tried to do something. Never seen that here.
- less individualism is good, to a certain degree. People consider others around them, and it makes things easier. In Norway, watching videos on speaker has almost become normalized on the train post-covid, especially among kids who had their formative years in quarantine.
- there is less enshittification, app-ism, and x-as-a-service in my everyday life. It doesn't feel like people are trying to cut corners to squeeze a larger profit from me. Japan is a very capitalistic country, but it doesn't feel as doomed as the west. Yet.
Most of these problems "fixed" by Japan are related to economy of scale. Some are policy related, and some is culture. In Japan I have any hobby I want at my fingertips because there are enough people to support anything. Ordering online doesn't cost a fortune in fees. Public transport is good for many reasons, and still affordable because there are many paying for it. Even when I was a student here I could afford to live in a relatively dingy but completely ok apartment where I could be most places I wanted to go within 30 min.
I feel fulfilled and that i have no excuse not to check out anything I'm curious about. Norwegians are told they live in the best country and are the best their entire life, and I suspect this is why if you complain many Norwegians ignore it assuming it can't get better than this. If anything my takeaway is that going abroad and seeing other cultures really made me see that the worldview I grew up with was incomplete and prone to make me satisfied with what I had.
Don't get me wrong, Norway is a great place to start a family or grow old. It's a good place to live a life that's centered around a family. The nature is beautiful, and frankly I like the snow and freezing weather - it's cozy! But Japan offers almost all of the same, only with all the benefits of scale :D.
Finally. Biases:
- IT job makes my life comfortable by Japanese standards, but not by much. I don't work at an international company. Japanese people also seem to generally live very fulfilling lives, although the rumours regarding black companies and similar are definitely true.
- I have a nice and mature work environment that doesn't make me hate waking up
- I have only lived in cities orders of magnitude bigger than Norways Capitol while in Japan
- I have put a lot of (mostly passive) effort into learning about the country I moved to, and I know people who didn't who have had nasty surprises. You also should do your best at adjusting to how things work here and embrace it. I have had 0 surprises since I moved here. It doesn't mean I don't make mistakes. I make tonnes.
- I was also somewhat into the culture, so it's not like I was transplanted into a completely foreign culture. I had things I wanted to see here. You can tell Japan has done a good job soft power-wise.
- my Japanese reading isn't as good as it should be and so I don't have a habit of following local news, which makes me blind to a lot of smaller issues that are a more more visible to me in Norway
The biggest thing I personally miss is Norwegian friends, and the European hacker culture. There are tinkerers and hackers here but it's not really the same.
I know/knew a bunch of Scandinavians in software engineering who moved to Japan 10-15 years ago. They loved it as long as they worked for the Scandinavian company's Japan subsidiary. They didn't love it so much a few years later when they ended up having to find jobs at Japanese companies because of a downsizing. Some ended up at companies like Rakuten. Heard some horror stories of insane company "culture" that would make Amazon execs blush.
But you seem to be happy at a local company. Do you think you're lucky, have very low demands or have working conditions changed?
Ah, yes, as you've figured out, the secret is that a lower GDP is actually better than a higher GDP. When Japan did (really) well economically, it was a literal hell to live in.
That's entirely luck driven and not guided by data though. You could visit a foreign country, go out for a drink, meet a) nobody but still have a decently pleasant evening and b) get pickpocketed/mugged and have terrible time c) make some new friends and have a wonderful time d) eat some food that gives you anything from a delicious time to a mild case of indigestion to stomach bug that kills you. Or some other variation, but it's entirely up to luck who you'd meet visiting a foreign country on an individual basis.
The article says this has been running since 1963 though. The program would’ve been running through the post-war period of economic growth, as well as during the lost decades.
It also mentions that it was done to drive sales.
https://www.eater.com/dining-out/916976/yakult-lady-japan-yo... goes into more detail. (I recommend reading the entire article, it's excellent and covers a lot.)
Yakult ladies aren’t classified as full-time employees, but kojin jigyo usha (roughly “sole proprietors”), essentially making them owners of bicycle-sized franchises. They purchase product from Yakult and make a profit based on what they can sell. Yakult says the average earnings of a Yakult lady are roughly $682 USD a month, compared to an average of $1,774 per month for Japanese women broadly. In Yahoo Answers forums, Yakult ladies claim wildly different profits: Some say they work only three hours a day and make more than the company average. Others claim to work far more, selling roughly $2,700 worth of product in a month to take home about $600, roughly a 22 percent cut.
...
As I left the Yakult center, my baby clamoring for her nap, I felt oddly disillusioned — not by the women themselves, or even the no-nonsense manager, but by the corporate trappings of their work. Before I looked into it, I had swallowed the lighthearted, easy glow of Yakult’s promotional videos, which recalled my own experience when I was a kid. I would like to believe selling probiotic milk drinks is just an aside to Yakult ladies’ main mission of maternal care in the community. In the fluorescent lighting of the Yakult center, I saw their labor.
Thank you for sharing that literary and well-observed piece of writing. It is evocative and contemplative, a timely counterpart to TFA, and it is indeed excellent. I’d second your suggestion to others.
I'm so glad I visit different countries to see what they are actually like so I don't get brainwashed into thinking GDP is anywhere near of good measure as people think it is.
The case against GDP, by its own creator: https://gnhusa.org/gpi/the-case-against-gdp-made-by-its-own-...
It’s not that GDP is a poor measure, just that it is isolated as the only measure most policy is based on improving rather than being one metric in a portfolio of related metrics that balance technological progress, accumulation of wealth, and human thriving.
As Gary Stephenson rightly points out the culture of Economics in modern practice is not one of open query and scientific skepticism, but of proselytizing. More akin to a religion than a science.
[delayed]
GDP just measures the average wealth of a society, on the assumption that production equals consumption. Wealth is unambiguously good, but of course it fails at measuring the full extent of human flourishing.
My take on Economists is that they keep desperately trying to make people understand that prices are set by supply vs demand dynamics, while society keeps refusing to understand it.
Is wealth the right term here? I thought it was supposed to measure production, with the actual measurement usually spending (with qualifiers). And, when comparing countries, you have to account for the different currencies. Currencies are typically trade balanced, which gives a rough equivelence for buying power, but that is not true with the dollar because, as the effective reserve currency, it has international demand outside of trade.
I suspect that the US having better investment opportunities than other countries (tech companies for example) might be more important than reserve currency status.
People tend to pay more attention to trade than investment, but investment flows are just as important. A trade deficit often means that foreign investors are buying and a trade surplus goes along with people investing in foreign countries.
I moved to Japan and have taken what is now almost a 50% wage decrease on account of the collapsing yen, but my life quality easily doubled compared to Norway. For every year I stay, finances will be more painful if I move back. But permanent residency sure sounds a lot more attractive. YMMV if you're from more interesting places
That's really surprising, I was under the impression that Scandinavian QOL was also quite high. What are the major contributing factors to the 2x QOL?
- Nice things are within walkable distance living in a major city. In Norway we live mostly in suburbs. Living in the city is unaffordable. Zoning matters. Being able to just walk out of my apartment and do things spontaneously in my own area is a life changer. I can't describe how much the change in mindset from "I'll do a half day trip into town" to "I'll pop two train stops over" did for me
- private individuals can still afford to run their own stores and cafes. In Oslo it's all commercial "food concepts" and chains. Authentic is unwanted - a Japanese restaurant trying to be authentic was recently kicked out of their place recently for not cutting corners to make a good enough profit - the property owner took a % of every sale + alcohol sales and wasn't happy, so they fabricated reasons to cancel the contract. Eating out in Japan is affordable even on a Japanese salary and I have access to basically any cuisine you can imagine - and the foreign food is often made by immigrants from that country (with some exceptions). In Norway the biggest thing in tacos is currently a Swedish chain. In Japan I can befriend my local restaurant owners.
- niche interests are hard in Norway. Everyone in your circle shows up for the once a year interesting artist that isn't already a huge pop artist on a LiveNation tour. Tariffs are high (yes, watching the whole "who pays tariffs" debate has been mind numbing), effectively 25-50% including fees, so you feel punished for being interested in anything not local. Which is everything.
- public transport in Japan is generally great. public transport in Norway is horrible. The goal is to be rich enough to avoid it and just drive, even if parking in the city is easily 50$ for a few hours if you are unlucky. Delays all the time, but no fixes, just finger pointing. They stopped publishing statistics on how often trains were late, and didn't classify cancelled trains as delayed when they did publish stats. It's all just lies and deception to try to stop the public from being mad.
- I have access to basically all the culture I want, both Japanese and western. Everyone wants to stop by Japan. Not Norway. local culture in Norway is better than before but still pretty dead. Everyone just consumes American culture. There are cool Norwegian bands and a few good movies but that's about it. When I say this I am often asked "isn't Norway a heavy metal country" and yes sure, but it is still a small niche. I don't know anyone my age who partakes.
- the Norwegian hobby is football, walks in nature, or alcohol. I read somewhere that Norwegians drink as much Brits, but in a single weekend instead of averaged over a week. It makes sense to me. All my non tech friends' hobbies were basically going out and getting hammered. There are of course other hobbies and this is slight hyperbole to make a point, but in general everyone just gets drunk. 200 years ago there probably wasn't much better to do during winter, go figure. Alcohol is also a very big hobby in Japan, probably bigger than Norway. But there's more things outside alcohol as well.
- loads of crime in Oslo, recently a lot of youth violence, including random robberies with stabbing. Much less of that in Japan. In Japan I will frequently find myself walking streets at night with women I do but know when I'm heading home. In Norway female friends would often call me in those situations just so they could communicate to the stranger that someone would know if they tried to do something. Never seen that here.
- less individualism is good, to a certain degree. People consider others around them, and it makes things easier. In Norway, watching videos on speaker has almost become normalized on the train post-covid, especially among kids who had their formative years in quarantine.
- there is less enshittification, app-ism, and x-as-a-service in my everyday life. It doesn't feel like people are trying to cut corners to squeeze a larger profit from me. Japan is a very capitalistic country, but it doesn't feel as doomed as the west. Yet.
Most of these problems "fixed" by Japan are related to economy of scale. Some are policy related, and some is culture. In Japan I have any hobby I want at my fingertips because there are enough people to support anything. Ordering online doesn't cost a fortune in fees. Public transport is good for many reasons, and still affordable because there are many paying for it. Even when I was a student here I could afford to live in a relatively dingy but completely ok apartment where I could be most places I wanted to go within 30 min.
I feel fulfilled and that i have no excuse not to check out anything I'm curious about. Norwegians are told they live in the best country and are the best their entire life, and I suspect this is why if you complain many Norwegians ignore it assuming it can't get better than this. If anything my takeaway is that going abroad and seeing other cultures really made me see that the worldview I grew up with was incomplete and prone to make me satisfied with what I had.
Don't get me wrong, Norway is a great place to start a family or grow old. It's a good place to live a life that's centered around a family. The nature is beautiful, and frankly I like the snow and freezing weather - it's cozy! But Japan offers almost all of the same, only with all the benefits of scale :D.
Finally. Biases:
- IT job makes my life comfortable by Japanese standards, but not by much. I don't work at an international company. Japanese people also seem to generally live very fulfilling lives, although the rumours regarding black companies and similar are definitely true.
- I have a nice and mature work environment that doesn't make me hate waking up
- I have only lived in cities orders of magnitude bigger than Norways Capitol while in Japan
- I have put a lot of (mostly passive) effort into learning about the country I moved to, and I know people who didn't who have had nasty surprises. You also should do your best at adjusting to how things work here and embrace it. I have had 0 surprises since I moved here. It doesn't mean I don't make mistakes. I make tonnes.
- I was also somewhat into the culture, so it's not like I was transplanted into a completely foreign culture. I had things I wanted to see here. You can tell Japan has done a good job soft power-wise.
- my Japanese reading isn't as good as it should be and so I don't have a habit of following local news, which makes me blind to a lot of smaller issues that are a more more visible to me in Norway
The biggest thing I personally miss is Norwegian friends, and the European hacker culture. There are tinkerers and hackers here but it's not really the same.
Thank you, interesting insights.
Do you speak japanese well? I assume without you only get by in certain bubbles in big cities?
I know/knew a bunch of Scandinavians in software engineering who moved to Japan 10-15 years ago. They loved it as long as they worked for the Scandinavian company's Japan subsidiary. They didn't love it so much a few years later when they ended up having to find jobs at Japanese companies because of a downsizing. Some ended up at companies like Rakuten. Heard some horror stories of insane company "culture" that would make Amazon execs blush.
But you seem to be happy at a local company. Do you think you're lucky, have very low demands or have working conditions changed?
Ah, yes, as you've figured out, the secret is that a lower GDP is actually better than a higher GDP. When Japan did (really) well economically, it was a literal hell to live in.
/s
Guys look I used /s and like to be snarky. Updoots to the left.
Edit: guy has now edited his comment like 5 times as a response.
[flagged]
I don't see a question.
If you're asking about what's better than looking up GDP, they already said visiting the countries.
That's entirely luck driven and not guided by data though. You could visit a foreign country, go out for a drink, meet a) nobody but still have a decently pleasant evening and b) get pickpocketed/mugged and have terrible time c) make some new friends and have a wonderful time d) eat some food that gives you anything from a delicious time to a mild case of indigestion to stomach bug that kills you. Or some other variation, but it's entirely up to luck who you'd meet visiting a foreign country on an individual basis.