Why This Topic Landed in Japan

A weak yen and stagnant real wages have made "Japan has grown poorer" a widely shared feeling, and the firsthand accounts of residents and travelers abroad were received as backing for it. At the same time, there is a durable counter-view that free water, safety, and cheap, high-quality service make the country plenty comfortable, along with a reframing that "the bubble-era wealth was the anomaly." The "over 1,000 yen" figure for German water includes bottled pricing and is higher than a typical glass. The accounts from a resident of Australia and a Singapore traveler are individual experiences, and do not on their own show that "Japanese tourists have plummeted" or that "the whole country is impoverished"; in fact, outbound Japanese travelers in January 2026 were up 17.6% year on year, so single anecdotes do not establish a broad decline in overseas travel.

Key Reaction Themes

  • A felt sense of decline, and self-deprecation — The most common strand: "everything is expensive abroad," "imports are a rich person's luxury," and "you don't see Japanese travelers anymore."
  • Relativizing and the counter-view — A strong strand held that the bubble years were abnormal, and that a country with free water, safety, and cheap good food is still very livable.
  • Background and factual corrections — Cooler notes added that seaweed was always a luxury, that serving proper water would cost about the same in Japan, and that German incomes are more than double.

What Japanese Netizens Are Saying

An Australia resident: "Skimping even on the seaweed?"

A resident abroad, startled on a visit home by how much people were economizing, set off a debate over prices and wages.

Comments:

  • "No idea about the countryside, but in the cities absurdly expensive stuff still flies off the shelves, so that's not it. People have a line of 'I won't pay more than this at a mere convenience store,' and the stores just can't keep offering products at that price point anymore."
  • "Nori was originally a luxury item, the kind of thing you'd give as a midyear gift. At some point it got discounted heavily, and now it feels like it's gone back to being a luxury."
  • "Giving nori as a funeral thank-you gift was a thing precisely because it was expensive and appreciated."
  • "Median annual income for ordinary workers by country: Japan 1990 ¥5.5M → 2026 ¥3.5M (non-regular low-income rate over 40%, tax-and-social-insurance burden up from 10% to 45%); US 1990 $30k → 2026 $85k (¥13M); China 1990 ¥2,000 yuan → 2026 ¥120k yuan. And Japan is the only country in the world where workers' wages kept falling for over 30 years. On top of prices more than doubling — of course it ends up like this."
  • "Prices rose way more than wages did. These days even chocolate is too expensive to buy casually."
  • "Grabbing just a little at Don Quijote came to 2,000 yen — that got a laugh out of me."
  • "FamilyMart uses Korean-made nori, and it's cheap."

A German marvels at Japan's "free water"

A story that water, paid for in Germany, is free in Japan opened a debate over the value of everyday infrastructure.

Sources: Yahoo! news

Comments:

  • "It's a country where they drink beer instead of water, after all."
  • "Japanese people go out of their way to drink imported water when they can drink it free."
  • "Packaged water costs money in Japan too."
  • "Water dispensers have become standard at restaurants, haven't they."
  • "Note that their income is more than double, apparently."
  • "There's literally an idiom 'like hot water' here because the stuff is so abundant."
  • "Right. If a restaurant served proper water, it would normally cost about that much in Japan too."

"What makes you feel Japanese people have gotten poor?"

A thread listing everyday signs of belt-tightening mixed a sense of decline with "we've just gone back to normal."

Sources: 2ch

Comments:

  • "Everything's way too expensive abroad. Imported goods are a rich person's luxury now."
  • "I was poor as a kid, so now that I can earn my own money I'm far better off. You lot complain too much."
  • "On my third Singapore trip this September, I didn't see a single Japanese person on Orchard Road. I went both Saturday and Sunday and there really wasn't one — maybe two or three groups near the Merlion, barely. The last two times they were swarming everywhere."
  • "Dual income, and still a kei-car."
  • "The supermarket parking lot is full on sale days."
  • "Those false-bottom bento boxes — it's not that I want to eat a ton, but you look at one and go, 'what is this?' lol"
  • "Lawson's poverty meals."
  • "The only thing that moves into vacated storefronts is funeral parlors."
  • "People lamenting that the iPhone is expensive."
  • "There are a lot of kei-cars now; there used to be more full-size cars."
  • "Once you're on the selling side, you feel painfully how poor Japanese people are, lol. At tourist-spot souvenir shops — already overpriced — the only ones filling their baskets are foreigners."
  • "People walking around — their clothes look cheap."
  • "The generation that most needs money has little in savings, so for the country as a whole that's a minus."