I gasped out loud at the prices I saw at the airport on the way to England. Even accounting for the weak yen, I was astonished at how far prices abroad have climbed.
Four slices of salmon sashimi came to over ¥900. Not something you reach for even hungry.
Drinking water to fool your stomach into feeling full? A bottle of water is over ¥500.
For reference, the exchange rate at Kansai Airport this time was ¥190 to the pound.
Through the days of test-driving in England, petrol is simply unavoidable.
Fifty litres of regular petrol: £100. Which works out to ¥380 a litre.
It is not only goods — even the launderette had gone up, everything by roughly 7–8%.
It is easy to say Japan is cheap and lucky, but a day may come when we cannot say that any more. Because Japan could end up the same way.
Tomorrow the warm-up rally for the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, organised in England, begins.
The petrol cost is terrifying.