Japan consumers' Christmas budgets down 27% amid rising living costs

Japanese people, especially the older generation are very good holding onto their money in difficult times.

I’ve learned from them very valuable ways when it comes to saving and for this reason I’m not in debt. The biggest one don’t spend money you don’t have and save for a rainy day.

Best XMAS gifts are FREE, like time with family and friends, especially with little innocent Angelic Kids!

Christmas is about the joy of family and friends if you're lucky enough to have them. It's not a celebration of capitalism.

"as many look to save money"

Its cause is nothing but poverty and inequality what LDP government's negligence or incompetence bringing people.

Our Christmas budget will be the same as any other day: Rossitorie chicken, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and chocolate pudding. The total cost is about ¥2,000 for four meals, which is not bad.

Usually budgets go up when prices go up. Shrinking the first by 27% while the second rise by say 10% means an effective reduction in goods and services bought of around 34%. Oh, and due to can only follow a noun, not a verb

who in their right mind would spend money in Japanese stores with these prices?

What's the Christmas budget in Japan for? A bucket of chicken and a love hotel?

Abenomics is an absolute complete and utter disaster!!

I fully support not throwing your money at a weird capitalist holiday to help big corporate businesses.

So KFC has become too expensive for people in one of the most 'developed' economies.

what has the world come too.

Japan consumers' Christmas budgets down 27% due to drastically increased living costs.

this is way BETTER HEADLINE and MORE ACCURATE

Many people around the planet have a zero Xmas budget. nought wrong with that. Some S.E.A. have accommodated it for the childrens. cute.. or consumerism. I have done Xmas in jpn several times yrs ago, quiet, short, over and done with, budgets are tight. Headline should concentrate on New Year spending adjustment. Temple visit variance etc. more meaningful??

Sadly people work during Christmas and this holiday aligns with bonenkai season. Instead of having a family dinner on Christmas eve and celebrating to kids opening presents the next morning, everyone comes home late on eve because they need to meet deadlines before shougatsu yasumi. They also need to get up early in the morning to go to work the following day to answer phone calls and e-mails that come pouring in because clients and other businesses think that they will be able to reach you early in morning just a few days before shougatsu yasumi so they can have something done for them that just can't wait until next year for some reason.

Christmas is a Christian holiday and I'm glad Japanese like to celebrate it. They celebrate it in various ways such as buying a Christmas cake for their loved ones. As with everything they've just got to spend less if money is tight.

Quality of life is getting worse and worse. Greater costs for less.

For those bemoaning Christmas spending: winter is a bleak miserable time for a lot of people. A day where we can all treat and be treated by our loved ones is a once in the year beacon of hope and joy.

We swap which one we’re going to spend more on here. One year Xmas and the other new years. If there is something we’re looking forward to at a shop on a new years sale, we hold off on for that. If not we go bigger on Xmas gifts. This is a Xmas year for us personally.

No surprise, A Christmas gift is beginning to look like a thing of the past, people are simply tired of the fuzz and buzz show retailors put out to get consumers to buy anything.

Christmas best present is going with the Family to church which is a blessing in itself.

Why would any non-Christian celebrate Christmas? Especially if they aren't in a majority Christian nation?

Festivus makes more sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festivus

We all work for this christian day and as Japan do not below to this religion, the budget is zero for most people.

Wait until 2025 comes around.

It looks like parsimony will only increase…

Wow, hard to put 'lipstick' on this pig, ugly, but inflation's only 2 or 3 percent because the BOJ says so!

So enough for a KFC bucket and a present for the little ones.

And in the headline image you can see the tell-tale misspellings of AI generated content.

The AI automation wave decreasing the take home pay of knowledge and factory workers is something that is also reducing consumer spending.

And governments are loath to address it for fear of cutting into the massive profit margins coming in this financialized boom.

Japan Inc./LDP combine playing Scrooge this Xmas.

"amid" ???? a much-used word, and sounds inocuous.... actually it should be:

Japan consumers' Christmas budgets down 27% due to drastically increased living costs

Isn't that obvious? Wage stagnant while price going up.

People just spend less money, in this article about how Japan consumer limit their Christmas budget.

In other article many Izakaya filling for bankruptcies.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2024/12/09/economy/izakaya-bankruptcies-teikoku/

In response to a multiple-choice question concerning plans for Christmas, "No plans" was the most selected response at 51.1 percent, up 1.2 percentage points from last year, while 27.4 percent chose "Buy a present (including one for myself)," down 2.3 percentage points.

So none of those 'virtuous cycles of wage growth brought by inflation' are in sight.

Japan needs to recharge consumer spending, there is still a market, and what will save Japan style capitalism is a UBI.

The subsidies and corporate welfare and tax cuts for wealthy property owners do not trickle down.

Time to give trickle up a try.

Good job xmas is only a gimmick here and not a real holiday. Taro and Naoko Sans out there can skip it and focus on Oshogatsu instead.