A good overview of the bubble in Japan and the follow up 3 decades. What is missing from this financial analysis is the carry trade and the low interest rates which make the recovery impossible.
So yes, now is the time to visit Japan, but this short window of opportunity won't last. It cannot. Japan is being impoverished almost as fast as the country was getting artificially rich in the 1980s. The country is now old, factories are in China, low interest rates help real estate speculation in Tokyo where a forest of, mostly useless, towers is being built, while little productive investment is being made.
Development is a process which requires a dynamic where you must get most of the parts of the system right: Work, money, investment and consumption. When you do, you get Asia. When you get only some of the factors right, it's South America. And when you get most of the factors wrong, well, you immediately notice it when you get there!
The real problem is that the dynamic works both way. It gets you to the top and then suddenly when some of the factors invert, people stop working or investment stops being productive, suddenly, you are in a negative cycle which like a downward Corkscrew in a plane is extremely difficult to exit. That's Japan right now!
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