Japanese events in London: 3rd August - 9th August 2009
This week we have Barry Crisp, the Creative Director for i-genius, author of Guruguru Japan and founder of UK-JAPAN.net as a guest speaker, an event that immediately follows from our Japanese language class. Through a creative medium (film and journalism), Barry hopes to make the world more aware of the environmental, cultural, social and health issues that effect and surround us everyday. We are lucky enough to have him as our guest speaker so come and join us!! Barry is also a teacher at a High School in Japan.
Barry will be our third guest speaker for the July 2009 intake. Please follow this link to see what we covererd in our third Japanese language class.
This week, we do not have too much to report on, aside from to say that we will be reporting from time to time on the state of the Japanese economy. The news is pretty gloomy to be truthful, indeed, Japanese wholesale prices were down by a record 8.5% in July compared with a year earlier, highlighting the growing deflationary pressure in the economy. Japan, the world's second largest economy, experienced a prolonged period of deflation in the 1990s, commonly referred to as "the lost decade".
However, the central bank is confident that low interest rates and the stimulus packages it has already implemented will prevent deflation taking hold again. Lets have some good news please!! A report as quoted on the BBC website did say that conditions in Japan's economy had stopped worsening, however unemployment would stay high and consumer spending low.
Last month, the bank forecast that Japan's economy would shrink by 3.4% in the 12 months to 31 March 2010.
We really would like to see the economy pick up both here and in Japan!! Hoopefully in our blog this time next year we will report more confidently on the state of the Japanese economy.
