Friday May 22

Our lecture today was on the public finance in an aging society of Japan. The professor spoke about the fiscal condition in Japan. They have the potential to face serious financial difficulties in the future. Currently the central government has $6 billion of debt and total Japan had $10 billion of debt. They also only have 127 million aging people and declining. They spent a lot of money in the 90's to try to stabilize their economy. They have increasing social security and health care costs. The government is going to have to raise taxes such as the consumption tax and income taxes to help make up for their fiscal deficit. However both parties are hesitant to raise taxes in this important election year. They issued 40 trillion yen of new bonds this year to make up for the deficit. In the 90's Japan used public works to try to boost the economy which did not do too much considering all the money they spent.
We went to the American Embassy after class. We met with the head of a group of people who read the news in Japan every day and make reports about current events and opinions in the news. He spoke about how there is less support for the U.S. in Japan than there used to be. However Japan needs the U.S. for trade and protection. After this session myself and a few of the other students went back to Ginza to go shopping.
That night we went to Shibuya to go out to eat. This is the location of the famous crosswalk where more people cross here every day than any other place in the world. We did not know where we were going, as it was a surprise. We ended up at a place called The Lockup. It was a restaurant in the basement of a building that was made into caves. Each dining room had a cell door and there were times when the lights would go out and people would go around trying to scare you. We sat on the floor to eat which is taking some time getting use to it because of my height. It was an all you can eat and drink place that about 30 of us went to including some Japanese students who will be going to Boston this summer.
We went to a club after dinner called Atom. It had three floors with a different theme on each floor. It was crazy that all of the guys and girls got really dressed up in their "fashionable" clothes and had their hair done. They looked a lot different than how people go out in the U.S. We wanted to go to the Tokyo Fish Market in the morning at 6 am so we stayed out until the club closed at 5 am and went to the market.