There’s that stereotype that the Japanese are business saavy, are great at spotting good long term investments and such. While that may be true for a small number of business leaders, it certainly seems not true for the rest of the population, particularly older folk.
Case and point: once a month, a representative from the local bank comes to my grandparent’s house to collect a monthly deposit of 10,000 yen (roughly 90 bucks). So over a year, they deposit about $1000. They do this with two banks so maybe $2,000 in total. And the interest rate? a nice 0.3%. A cool $6 a year. I want to take their money and invest it in some bond funds for them. Even after the huge tax nightmare, I’d probably still be able to do better than 0.3%.
But then again, they’re just getting exposed to even the interweb. It’s not like all that investment info is floating around in many other forms.