Pricele #109: Cappuccino in Japan 🇯🇵

A cappuccino is priced almost entirely by what surrounds it. Coffee beans are a global commodity that costs roughly the same everywhere, so nearly all of the difference between a $1.50 cup and a $6.50 cup is local rent, wages and what the market will bear. That makes it one of the sharpest signals of local cost of living in the game.

Of the 32 countries priced for cappuccino, Japan ranks #21 from the top at $3.14, 14% below the median of $3.67.

Japan is the clearest case in the game of a country that stopped feeling expensive. A weak yen has pushed dollar prices well below where they sat a decade ago, and the Big Mac Index now scores the yen as one of the most undervalued major currencies. Fruit is the exception, since premium apples are a gift category and priced like one. Japan also runs one of the few consumption taxes that changes with how you consume: 10% standard, but 8% on food and non-alcoholic drinks bought to take away, so the same coffee is taxed differently depending on whether you sit down with it. For a table built partly out of café items, that distinction is not academic.

See the full table for cappuccino in every country or everything priced in Japan.