7-Eleven now has Japan's biggest retail balls

[Taro Toporific]

Seven & I to Pay $1.13B for Millennium
Yahoo! News, Mon, Dec 26, 2005 3:34:56 PM
TOKYO ---Seven & I Holdings Co., owner of 7-Eleven convenience stores in Japan and the United States, said Monday it will pay 131.1 billion yen ($1.13 billion) to buy department store operator Millennium Retailing Inc. in a deal creating Japan's biggest retailer...Aside from 7-Eleven, Seven & I also owns the Ito-Yokado supermarket chain. Millennium owns Japanese retailers Sogo Co. and Seibu Department Stores Ltd....more...

[Mulboyne]

Thats a tidy profit of around 30 billion yen for the seller, Nomura Principal Finance. The Japanese press is reporting that they made 80 billion but they put in an additional 50 billion yen nearly a year ago.

[Mulboyne]

Asahi: Megamerger of retailers
...One of the top-selling books this year has been "Karyu Shakai" (Low society). The author, Atsushi Miura, is a marketing expert. In the book, Miura argues that class stratification is becoming keener in Japan, which was once called a sort of "all middle class" society. One consequence, he says, is the emergence of a two-tier structure in the consumer market--a segment for luxury goods and one for low-priced products...more...

[Taro Toporific]

...In the book, Miura argues that class stratification is becoming keener in Japan, which was once called a sort of "all middle class" society.

One and only real change I've noticed since I came to the Concrete Buttplug(tm) in 1984 is that the feeling of "all middle class" (meaning everyone lives equally downscale) has vanished.

Today, Kanto is still a concrete buttplug. However, some folks now have a gilded insertion while more folks just get reamed with a section of rusty rebar.