Prices for 2,798 food items to increase in April

The main factor is soaring raw material prices for packaging, according to Teikoku…

How about using less plastic then?

In line with expectations. Expect more in October. Work harder guys and girls!

While wages in Japan stay stagnant.

@sakurasuki: But the constant whining about stagnant wages is getting old. Fact of life in Japan. Find a new job, change career, work more overtime, whatever it takes to maintain your standard of life.

I would say Takaichi will get to 90% approval rate now. it looks Japanese like to have a government doing this.

De ja vu anyone?

In line with expectations. Expect more in October. 

October? What are you talking about, next month it will be worse. Every month prices just keep rising, and now with the war in Iran they have a handy excuse. But even if somehow Trump is able to extract himself and things return to any semblance of normality, prices will just keep rising as salaries stay the same!

Japan has been in decline since the 1990s. The generation that rebuilt the country after the war started with little, yet through resilience and hard work, they built something remarkable. But their children were raised in comfort—sheltered from the struggles that forged their parents’ generation. Many grew up without a true understanding of what it takes to sustain a nation’s strength and prosperity.

Now, that generation has entered the workforce. They work hard, but often without meaningful output. There’s a lingering culture where prestige matters more than substance—where cheating on entrance exams to secure a spot at a top university can still lead to a lifetime of unchallenged employment. Showing up becomes confused with being productive, and busyness is mistaken for impact.

In the 1980s and ’90s, Japan was defined by innovation, craftsmanship, and ambition. Today, much of what the world associates with Japan is its cultural soft power—an asset, but not a substitute for economic dynamism. That alone won’t sustain the country in the long run.

Prices will continue to rise. Inertia will persist—until a generation emerges that refuses to accept the status quo; one equipped not just with frustration, but with the skill, creativity, and will to build something new.

But the constant whining about stagnant wages is getting old

Old, but correct!

The most common price increases will be for condiments such as mayonnaise and salad dressings, at 1,514 items, followed by processed foods such as instant noodles at 609 items, alcoholic

The good thing is, that I don't eat mayonnaise and my intake of processed foods is very very limited.

Increase the price of alcohol is a problem for me....because I like my cup of Sake or a glass of whiskey sometimes at the weekend or sometimes after a hard working day.

The world of make-believe is getting slammed into the wall of reality. Even a KFC chicken wing costs about as much as a bowl of ramen.

De ja vu anyone?

Yes. It would seem that every couple of months we get this lovely announcement that prices will rise.

October? What are you talking about, next month it will be worse. Every month prices just keep rising, and now with the war in Iran they have a handy excuse. 

Exactly. And for those of us trying to raise kids its a double whammy.

but the yen's depreciation also contributed

and if the yen went back to 115 tomorrow they would just make another excuse.

We are never informed what items.

Look at that photo, everything is so perfect and orderly. Nobody wants to touch it.

Like an April Fool's Day joke that won't be ending come 12pm.

Prices of basic commodities in my Supermarket chain spiked long before this avalanche of price hikes, some over 25%! How is this allowed by the law when it seems absolute extortion!

wallaceToday  08:12 am JST

We are never informed what items.

The article states;

”The most common price increases will be for condiments such as mayonnaise and salad dressings, at 1,514 items, followed by processed foods such as instant noodles at 609 items, alcoholic and other beverages at 369 items and and edible oils at 259 items.”

As usual every year, news and variety TV shows will be convering various items that will increase in price. Which seem like the same things every year for the most part.

If you want an exact list of every 2.,798 item you'd have to search for that information.

Yeah, we "got it."

Like clockwork, this is gonna keep happening every month.

No need to announce it anymore, we know.

OssanAmerica

We are never informed what items.

The article states;

> ”The most common price increases will be for condiments such as mayonnaise and salad dressings, at 1,514 items, followed by processed foods such as instant noodles at 609 items, alcoholic and other beverages at 369 items and and edible oils at 259 items.”

> As usual every year, news and variety TV shows will be convering various items that will increase in price. Which seem like the same things every year for the most part.

> If you want an exact list of every 2.,798 item you'd have to search for that information.

Not much information, is it really?

An average price rise for the items would be helpful, or at least more helpful than a precise number of items affected.

We drive cars so it helps us, but I think its fair to question why the government is subsidizing gasoline but is not subsidizing food. One in three people is over 65. Many of them cannot

Find a new job, change career, work more overtime, whatever it takes to maintain your standard of life.

Some of them are also doing very valuable unpaid things, looking after age 90+ parents or helping with their grandkids.

wallaceToday  10:50 am JST

OssanAmerica

We are never informed what items.

The article states;

”The most common price increases will be for condiments such as mayonnaise and salad dressings, at 1,514 items, followed by processed foods such as instant noodles at 609 items, alcoholic and other beverages at 369 items and and edible oils at 259 items.”*

As usual every year, news and variety TV shows will be convering various items that will increase in price. Which seem like the same things every year for the most part.*

If you want an exact list of every 2.,798 item you'd have to search for that information.*

Not much information, is it really?

A short news article listing all 2,798 items would be rather lengthy, no?

You may want that full information for obvious reasons. I fully agree it would be helpful. But in journalism a news article, and a brief even moreso, is constrained by rules, such as word count and column inches to ensure brevity. A practice that goes back to to the ever consuming issue of "newspaper space". This 170 word JT news article is written in a textbook format.

Basically prices got at least doubled in the past 5,6 years. And guess what? The real salaries are lower and lower each month due to rampant inflation and currency crash.

Sadly, it will only get worst from now, since Japan no longer have a competitive industry. Just look what happened to the Tech companies.

ALL dead, buried or bought by Chinese.

It's almost time to move......

I'm with Wallace and others- please report some examples. It doesn't have to be the full list, but it would be a lot more informative to give us five or six examples.

Luckily for me I am a simple meat and veggies man with little to no processed food or condiment use. Pity those who slap on the mayo and dressings of who eat highly processed junk. For you guys it might be a wake up call to reevaluate things and go healthy.

Japan's getting screwed

I suspect the article mentions condiments due to the huge range of such products and their standardization.

It cannot talk about slices of belly pork because that is not a standardized product and its price will be set based on source, quality, etc. This does not mean for one second that the price of sliced belly pork is not going up, it is simply not going up in a synchronized way on April 1 in a headline-grabbing way like standardized, long-shelf-life products like mayonnaise. The price of meat likely went up two weeks ago, and also went up two months ago, and also went up blah blah whenever market conditions dictated it. The same goes of course for the Japanese housewife's major concern of late, the price of rice. Our farming friends did not wait until this morning to drop a price increase on us.

My spouse does the shopping while I'm cooking dinner. She will find many food items with the price reduced, or we have three large food stores, and she knows which one has the best price, for example, jam. We were gifted 45kg of brown rice. Also, a lot of fruit and vegetables. Boxes of apples from Nagano and oranges from Shizuoka. Helps to keep our food bills down.

Kind of obvious thing to say, but Takaichi would be wise to rush in the promised cut to consumption tax on food. People will see this as far more important than her playing fan girl to Donald Trump.

The world of make-believe is getting slammed into the wall of reality. Even a KFC chicken wing costs about as much as a bowl of ramen.

Make believe vs ‘the wall of reality’;

One KFC chicken piece costs about ¥300. The cheapest Ramen bowl costs about ¥700.