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I recently heard that a trip to Popeye's for a family of 3 recently cost $68 in Florida.
In Japan, there's a big issue when a snack raises its price 2 cents (3 yen - source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/japanese-snack-company-apolog...)
The country for better or worse seems to be frozen in time - salaries have not caught up with the heady levels of SV (or even Europe) but neither have rents or prices for common goods.
This is not a judgment either way - but it does make Japanese exports a significantly more lucrative business - if only they could figure out how to sell more of their stuff abroad!
> In Japan, there's a big issue when a snack raises its price 2 cents
No, there really isn't. You're looking at one company that "apologized" as a marketing play but outside of that prices have been increasing with no fanfare for years now. The annual inflation rate has been 2-3% for the past 4 years. It's a lot less interesting to write a news article about that though.
I watch one of those “apartments for rent in Japan” channels and I’m consistently shocked how inexpensive apartments are in lower tier cities / not Tokyo. Like a studio in an inconvenient part of Fukuoka for $200-250 a month.
I guess the salaries are lower, but it’s hard to imagine such cheap rent in the equivalent American city.
> I recently heard that a trip to Popeye's for a family of 3 recently cost $68 in Florida.
Just checked online.
8pc family meal of spicy white meat with large mash potatoes and gravy, one sweet tea, one purple lemonade, one chilled premium mango lemonade
=
$41.05
@ 1501 NW 20th St, Miami, FL 33142
Bring-your-own-liquids = $30.38
Either ordering at the counter is criminally expensive, or you were listening to someone who wanted to spend $68 at Popeye's in Florida so they could complain about spending $68 at Popeye's in Florida.
As a kid, I always wondered why prices HAVE to keep going up. Seemed like a vicious cycle.
Comparing prices between Japan and Europe or US is strongly skewed by the weak yen.
The fact that the JPY has lost a lot of value compared to the US dollar has nothing to do with how prices or salaries in Japan evolve.
In Japan, inflation adjusted wages are down 2% over the last 20 years. In the same time frame in the US, they're up 20% and even for the bottom quartile, earnings are up 15%.
> I recently heard that a trip to Popeye's for a family of 3 recently cost $68 in Florida.
That’s $22 per person. Would like to see what they ordered. Not saying I don’t believe it but that’s pretty high. My family of 4 can eat chilfila for that and chikfila is kind of pricey for fast food where Popeyes is pretty much trash.
> but neither have rents or prices for common goods.
All the price increases over the last few years disagree.
Prices in California seem out of control to me. Recent examples, BLT + Coffee = $36, Plate of broccoli, plate of peas, small pizza, tap water = $95. Plate of 2 tacos, burger, 2 drinks = $120. 2 sandwiches = $60
As for Japan. ATM food is often cheaper. If you want cheap though, there are plenty of much cheaper places in the world. For rent, there are cheap options I wish existed in the states. As many point out tho, size is small. I'm happy to pay less for a smaller place but the price per square meter is comparable, maybe not to SF but at least to LA.
Note that like any city, there is a vast range from downtown to less popular parts of the city. "Tokyo" even includes mountains and farmlands on it's far west side
I can't say I've ever been to Popeye's, but $68 for 3 people seems unlikely based on their online prices: I picked a random one in Orlando, Florida and the "family meal" (which appears to be a very large amount of chicken) is $20.
The closest thing would be the "16Pc Classic Signature Chicken Family Meal," which is $55.69 at that location and is described as feeding between 6 and 8 people. So you'd need to tip a bit to get to $68 from there.
Popeyes has always been ridiculously over-priced. I stopped going there over a decade ago when I realized they charge at least 2x any other fast food place that exists. They are the same as Five Guys, but at least Five Guys puts some effort into appearing like you are getting quality food. Both are way over-priced though.
Japan gets an economic pass because they have such a strict monoculture.
In the same way you can "break" the laws of thermodynamics by getting every atom to move in the same direction at the same time, you can "break" the laws of economics by getting every person to make the same illogical choice at the same time.
For the longest time their strategy was to:
1. Issue bonds at near zero or even negative yield.
2. Buy US bonds.
The country is still one of the largest foreign US debt holders at $1.191T, and interest from this debt pays for a significant fraction of the interest on their own debt.
That's 10 cents for a single 35-calorie corn puff, to be clear, and it was a 25% price increase. 10 cents for one corn puff is not actually a good price.
> In Japan, there's a big issue when a snack raises its price 2 cents
That can't be true. So inflation just doesn't exist in Japan?
Japan had decades of deflation after 1990. There’s a generation of people who got used to prices staying flat or going down.
Note that the snack price was increased "from 12 yen ($0.08) to 15 yen ($0.10)". That's a 25% increase.
> I recently heard that a trip to Popeye's for a family of 3 recently cost $68 in Florida.
Does it?
People forget that prices don't rise automatically. Businesses decide to raise prices. There isn't some magical force called inflation cuasing prices to go up. It's human decision-making all the way down.
$20 used to feed a whole family at KFC/Popeyes.
Wrong.
Popeye's for 3 costs ~$10 in India unless you're trying to make a full-course meal out of it.
The CEO then went on to explain, “We raised base salaries in Japan by 10 percent in April 2023,” adding, “Since then, we have continued to review our compensation system to ensure that remuneration aligns with employees’ demonstrated capabilities, and in April 2026 we implemented further salary increases, including for starting pay.”
If their last raise was 3-4 years ago, this is a simple inflation adjustment, amazing they get good vibe front page Hacker News credit for this.
That's very cool. They don't say whether or not it's retroactive, though (I'll bet not).
I am astounded at some of the starting salaries, these days. Kids, right out of school, make more than I ever did, at the peak of my career.
And can't afford a house.
My father never made more than about $40K, but had a house in Potomac, two cars, and a stay-at-home wife.
Money ain't what it used to be.
This does not apply to Nintendo of America, which famously does underpay in the Redmond, WA area and well.. I hear has trouble truly attracting talent in the first place.
Nintendo gets a lot of flak for how they treat consumers and how litigious they are. However I get the impression they treat their employees very well in Japan. Like when the Wii U flopped, execs took a pay cut to avoid layoffs.
No company is perfect, but Nintendo seems like an example some C-suites should follow.
Always a great thing to hear. Well paid employees, good results, and I'm definitely loving their Switch 2 releases already.
For someone in Japan this is shockingly high! Money doesn’t go far here at all
Japanese Yen is now 162 to USD, the lowest exchange rate since 1986.
All the other major game studios are dying and Nintendo is taking care of their employees. Just goes to show that focusing on making great games, being protective of golden goose IP, and making unique hardware rather than just trying to push prettier pixels is a winning strategy.
Great thing about Nintendo is unlike its competitors, they don't go around chasing new tech and business models. All their focus is concentrated on the playing experience - interfacing, fun value, guilt-free hooks etc. In many ways they are more a classic toymaker than a tech firm. This is the reason why they have such a strong following, their product at least is not run by MBAs chasing every chance at a point increase in margins.
I wish there were more such successful "craftsman shops" out there than soulless "service providers" that today's video game companies are.
I recently watched a video game journalist speaking about this(chicocartera from Eurogamer): apparently this raise happened in 2023. There was an official transcription from an investors meeting at that time where this was covered.
It seems there are some subtleties in the translation which could lead to think it happened recently.
10% from what to what? Japanese companies are not famous for pay.
It mostly seems that Nintendo is trying very hard to prevent any concern over their stock price dropping like a rock
https://www.shacknews.com/article/149817/nintendo-ntdoy-pres...
Good for them. Nintendo and Sony in gaming have always marched by a different drummer. They have a successful business plan, and they execute. While their competition over the years have faded away bankruptcy.
I thought it is common in big companies to raise salaries by x% every year?
Good for them. My colleague used to work for them, said it was the best
Congratulations Nintendo employees! I've always had great conversations and interactions with your engineers so I think this is well deserved.
Annualized inflation this year (in the USA) is 10%. I heard Japan is worse. So they only get a 5% pay cut instead of a 15% pay cut? Hooray.
And the weakening of the yen to the dollar reduced the salary by -12% over the last year.
In Japan, giving your employees a raise is very rare and a sign of great respect.
Whats the highest paying gane studio? Rockstar?
The shareholders must be furious about this. Why not lay off 30% of the team and outsource game development and use ai for the art? That seems smarter.
Before people praise them (a bit late for that I guess given the current comments), Nintendo seems to pay quite poorly their employees in the first place, as you can see from the salaries on https://www.levels.fyi/en-gb/companies/nintendo/salaries/sof... for a company that has a stash of cash and is as successful as they are.
nintendo is one of the best in gaming for employees and one of the worst for customers. everyone here knows about the copyright and patent trolling but then you got things like 3D All Stars where they made a time limited digital release. not a physical limited edition or a third party rights problem. just decided to capitalize on FOMO at the expense of players.
the eshop is filled with huge amounts of slop they dont care about cleaning up, most of it with ai covers and lazy asset flip gameplay. permanent hardware bans that make buying a used switch 2 risky (you dont know if the previous user was a pirate). and they started the whole trend of $80 games by giving other publishers an excuse to charge more because nintendo does it too.
then you got insane demands for other devs like that time fortnite wanted zelda skins and even offered to make it exclusive (as in you can only buy or equip it on switch). nintendo said they would only do it if epic made the items invisible on all other platforms because they dont want their characters to be seen on xbox. its not a big deal for the rest of us but it shows how their execs really think.