Japan is Running Out of People (The End of the Western Expat)

​Japan is losing nearly a million people a year, and the two-tier economy is already here. At the end of the video I talked about different ways to survive and thrive in this changing landscape. One big way is rolling up our sleeves to help revitalize rural villages.

​My own path out here in Mito has been a bit different since I'm in the tech space building

Chronicle Creations http://www.chroniclecreations.co

and our new children's story app

Dreambook http://www.dreambook.kids

But the core message is exactly the same. In this new economy, the best thing you can do is build something of real value.
​If you could move to Japan and start any business, what would it be? It could be a tech startup in the city or a revitalization project out in the countryside.

Let’s brainstorm down below! 💡👇

​⏳ Jump to a specific chapter:
00:00 Japan’s Population Collapse
01:15 The End of the Western Expat
02:26 The Demographic Shift to Southeast Asia
02:42 The Digital Nomad Visa Reality Check
04:49 The Two-Tier Economy: Tourists vs. Residents
05:25 The "Ski Hill Vacuum" & Foreign Gentrification
08:31 Inside the 20% Foreign Factory Towns
09:10 Agriculture and the 60,000 Farmer Exodus
10:02 The Robotics Solution: Fact or Fiction?
12:16 Regional Revitalization & Surviving the Trap

When I was a child, I used to watch Japanese cartoons, like Ghost in the Shell, Bubblegum Crisis, and Macross Plus. These animé imagined a future in which racially/ethnically diverse people worked together to fight against rogue AI. This was a trope even as far back as Cyborg 009. The more time goes by, the more these pop culture icons seem more like prophecies.

Maybe you forgot to mention the weak yen? The Dollar Yen exchange rate has been 130+ for almost half a decade now and disincentivizes would-be western expats. For example, if a tech worker were to move to Japan from the US, they not only take a pay cut (salary in Japan is lower than US), but they also would be paid in weaker currency, while paying Japan's higher tax rate. It makes it much harder to move out of Japan once you move in.
If anything you'd think that focus on English education would become more important now that earning dollars yields more than yen, but perhaps assimilation of SE Asian workers is a bigger, more pressing task (learning Japanese ain't easy)

I am really surprised by the undertone of this video. I have always followed your content and always appreciated the takes, but this videos surprised me with the discriminatory tone. You're essentially implying that immigration was fine when it was "western" immigrants and now it is bad when it southeast Asians.

This is strange because the Southeast Asians are essential workers who Japan needs a lot more than the western ones. Call them cheap labour or whatever you want, but no country can function without factory workers, farmers, convenience stores clerks, nursing homes staff…etc. A country can certainly, however, function without English teachers. Southeast Asians take on jobs few Japanese (and almost no westerns) take on, but these jobs form the backbone of any economy and society.

Compare the jobs Southeast Asians take on to the jobs westerners take on and the westerners are almost always in English teaching. That is a low skill job, only requiring you to have been born in an English speaking country. The westerns are the ones that are not needed because they are as unskilled as they come. Their only skill is that they were born in an English speaking country by chance. Most of them do not even have teaching qualifications, but take advantage of the Japanese system which only wants native speakers without much consideration of their actual teaching skills. The results of this are obvious since the western English teachers have been coming to Japan since the 1980s and the Japanese's English level remains very low.

You are even asking for robots to replace the essential Southeast Asian workers? Very strange take by someone who has always had balanced takes. If Japan is to do quality control of immigrants, the first they would get rid of are the westerns. It goes without saying that migration must always be controlled regardless of the country, but to call out a specific group of people, a group that is much more beneficial to the society (and has, in fact, suffered from exploitation by Japanese employers), is shocking. You could have expressed your ideas in a better way taking into account the actual, practical benefit each immigrant group brings in!

Should Japan (or any other country) be concerned about a shrinking population? In the early 20th century Japans population sat around 40 million. And they were a regional power house. Some of the best living conditions in Canada were when the population was half its current level. In my personal world view. I think small is better in most every measure. Except Thrift Store Treasure. There is no too much when it comes to thrift store treasure. Long live Hard Off!

In regards to the Australian companies buying ski resorts in Hokkaido, that's no surprise; it's usually around the same price for Australians to fly to Japan to go skiing than it is to stay at a ski resort there, plus the quality of snow in Japan is going to be far better and you get to be outside of Australia (aka experiencing a foreign country) as well. I'd like to try the slopes near Tehran (Iran) but with everything going on…

Could also be an in for Australians wanting to take winter sports seriously; they just had their best Winter Olympics on record.

I hope this videos gets a lot of traction because it’s the best explanation I’ve seen on the current state of the country. I live in Kansai for many years during the peak of the import labor boom from China. It’s weird going back every year and rarely seeing a Japanese person working at a convenience store, how the Nepali restaurants just kept growing (there’s literally one every 100m or so in Kobe), and the housing situation just getting worse. So many foreigners romanticize buying an Akiya and have no idea how difficult it is. Keep making these videos. You’re saying exactly what needs to be said.

A six month digital nomad visa is a joke. Any Westerner an get a 3 month tourist visa. Then go overseas for a week, re enter Japan and get another 3 month tourist visa.

Hi Dave, Aussie who worked a season in Niseko here. A lot of cheap labour in ski resorts in Japan is actually done by poor western young people who wanna party and get a working holiday visa. Cheers

I saw a report on YouTube that very often these South East Asian workers get physically abused on the job by their Japanese employers .

immigrant time…. the cruel irony

The problem across the modernized world is women were propagandized to be career women and libertines and to at best indefinitely put off motherhood, and at worst hate motherhood.

I agree with about the Optimus robots. I’ve been saying it for a couple of years now. Tesla is my biggest position in my PF so I follow the company’s progress constantly.