Something can be bad but still become worse

It’s true. Try hanging out somewhere outside your house with no modern technology for two hours.

First you’ll realize how long time feels without a smartphone or instant entertainment.

The second thing you’ll realize is how hard it is to keep track of time without a wristwatch.

People socialized more in person because there wasn’t much else to do and it was the best way to do so.

A huge currency reserve of Japan is the dollar, which is why there’s now some economic instability, as the dollar has lost a lot of value due to Trump’s market manipulation.

It doesn’t mean the yen is weak, it means the commodities markets will be in flux, as that’s what things tend to fall back onto when things like these happen.

It’s also why cheap rice specifically has a shortage, and why Japan has found itself in a catch 22 for the importation of rice. What they could do is go from importation restriction to tariffed but allowed if they want to increase the rice supply and stabilize the price of domestic rice. But that would require some flexible legal framework that’s hard to write because you can’t keep rice imports opened now while deflation is still strong without killing most domestic production. Best solution is to allow import from somewhere where rice isn’t as cheap but still competitive, plus a very small temporary tariff that could over time be dissolved slowly, in my opinion at least.

There’s a whole lot of cascading effects happening right now because of the unstable US economic policy and much of the world having their currency either pegged to the US dollar or having it as a primary currency reserve. Some major economies like the EU are benefitting, but the closer the economic ties are to US the worse the effects are.

Deflation makes currency stronger, not weaker. That’s part of the issue with it when it comes to a domestic economy, because it means this start becoming drastically cheaper over time, but it’s only a problem if people keep waiting for prices to drop. It also devalues stocks, so large corporations don’t like it either, and if you have a lot of money, it’s not as competitive anymore locally with the average person’s money either. Landlords also lose out because real estate value stalls (btw this is part of the reason for why Japan’s mega cities exist - deflation has made it so nearly everyone can afford to live in the main city rather than needing to spread out to cheaper areas because inflation causes rent prices to increase via real estate value also increasing).

Buying overseas helps prevent deflation, but Japan has a protectionism type economy in general. Currency reserves from other countries buying exports heavily is what keeps things stable.

In the rice case, it’s purely to protect the local rice economy because deflation has made the yen strong, and allowing cheaper rice from a country with a weaker currency would make local rice unable to ever have the hopes of competing for any profit whatsoever, probably not even at break-even.