I went out to Umeda today to find these two in photo I had missed to buy while in Melbourne. Well I acctually didn't miss the chance, but I dare didn't buy them there because the prices were surprisingly high and unacceptable.
The left one is just replacement rubber pieces for a ear phone that I use which cost me only 480JPY today. Can you guess how much it was in Mel.? Almost 4 times more than the price in Japan!!!
And the right one is just a paper book, but the price was higher. It was almost 2000JPY(20AUS$)here, but the local price in Mel was almost 30AUS$. Why does it happen? I also checked the prices of other books in shops, but some reached even 50AUS$! Wow!!!
I never pictured of Australia such a high cost of living country. What about others, food, clothing and so on? They were also higher than what I was expecting, but one thing I noticed which I thought reasonable was the price of leather business shoes. Maybe that's because of tons of Aussie beef skins slaughtered for consumption in Australia and the world.
I usually buy bottles of mineral water to drink. I'm avoiding tap water for health. Anyway the prices were also not acceptable. For example, a bottle of 2L mineral water costs here in the cheapest around 100JPY(a bit more than 1AUS$), but 4-5AUS$ in shops I tried in Mel. In the case of mineral water, I should be more understanding because Australia doesn't have much rain and is facing difficulties in water supply.
I hear that Australia is still now in a good economy beacuse of the surplus in trading with China especially for mineral resourses. Is it a kind of bubble economy which may seem to burst in future? I don't know, but one thing I'm sure about is I'm never willing to live there.
There was a fad period some years ago that Japanese were moving to Australia to buy houses for thier retirement life. I wonder if they are still surviving there or already back in Japan with disapointment.
=Today's tweet=
Why don't you keep smiling?
Ha!? Why would I have to? Smiling is not only way for us human being to express emotion....
