Mr. Fujio Umemoto, 67 years old, belongs to a class of wealthy elderly people in Japan.
After decades of saving and generous retirement benefits, Mr. Fujio Umemoto said he now not only has time to rest but also has plenty of money to spend.
This 67-year-old man with tanned skin decided to pool money with a few friends to buy a luxury yacht for long trips or weekend getaways.
`I’ve paid off the house payment in installments. My children are all grown up. Now I just focus on enjoying life,` Mr. Umemoto said, `I don’t have any need to buy anything else, I just want to spend money.`
Mr. Umemoto did not disclose the exact amount of his retirement bonus, but last year, a regular rank employee, after decades with the same company, received a $210,000 bonus, according to the Association’s investigation results
Domestically, Japanese people own private yachts to go out with friends and family, and when abroad, they are VIP customers of first-class travel companies, Bloomberg reported.
Old and rich
Japan doesn’t have many super rich people.
`The way Japanese society operates creates rich people,` said Hiroyuki Miyamoto, an expert at the Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo.
Many rich people combined with rapid population aging are creating a class of rich and old people in the land of the rising sun.
‘Birth ceremony means wealth’
Experience on a super luxury train in Japan
The super luxury train Shiki-Shima of JR East railway company.
The president of the Kyushu railway company has a headache dealing with the fact that fewer and fewer people are using railway services due to population decline.
Kyushu’s new service model was so successful that other railway companies had to copy it.
`With Shiki-shima, we want to take rail travel to a new level,` Nikkei Asian Review quoted JR East Company President Tetsuro Tomita as saying at the opening ceremony.
Over the past two decades, Japan’s economy has gone through seven recessions, but the country remains extremely wealthy.
In addition to spending money to buy Hermes handbags or Rolex watches, Japanese people, especially the retired age group, are racing to spend money to experience first-class travel.
`The luxury (goods, services) market in Japan is growing extremely impressively,` said Greg Schulze, director of online travel agency Expedia Inc..
Expedia says the number of passengers flying first class has grown twice as fast as those flying economy.
Wealthy Japanese are also pouring money into cruise travel.
According to a representative of Nippon Yusen K.K. travel company, the company’s most high-end tour costs up to 230,000 USD for a three-and-a-half-month cruise around the world and was almost sold out in 2019.
The generous consumption patterns of wealthy Japanese people are attracting foreign companies.
Not only transportation companies and travel agencies, but also a series of other businesses including real estate, are also racing to upgrade the quality and diversity of services to win a piece of the market segment’s profit pie.
Last year, resort real estate group Hoshino Resort opened a traditional hot spring hotel right in the heart of Tokyo.
`We are proud of… doing something that no other company in Japan has tried to do,` Kyushu Railway Company president Koji Karaike said at the opening ceremony of the 7-star super luxury train in 2013.
An Hong
