Relaxation Deflation

[Mulboyne]

The cost of relaxation is falling fast. The gizmo on the right used to retail at around 21,000 yen but fell to 8,000. According to the retail magazines, the one on the left will go on sale next week at 4,000 yen.

[Behan]

Japan's housewives helping to drive deflation?

Tokyo, Japan (CNN) -- Social network Web sites have changed the way we communicate and ingest media. Now Japan's policymakers are feeling the force of social networking on the country's consumer prices.

Seventy thousand penny pinching housewives are members of Mainichi Tokubai, a user-driven site that delivers Tokyo's best grocery store prices to your fingertips.

No more flipping through hundreds of regional ads for the sales -- that's "so last year," says Satomi Sato. Every morning, she wakes up at the crack of dawn and scours just a couple of supermarket flyers in her paper.

On the morning we joined her, pork and scallions were the best deals she could find. ..

"I always buy cheap stuff," says Ishimoto, gripping her mobile phone, as she pushes her shopping cart. "I live with the comfort of knowing that I never get a bad deal."

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/04/29/japan.housewives.deflation/index.html?hpt=C2

(Instead of starting a new thread, I thought I'd hijack this one.)

The same reporter also wrote the article in this thread: http://www.fuckedgaijin.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24785&highlight=Kyung+Lah