Thinking about economy and management at Tokyo Stock Exchange on a walk in Kayaba-cho

Good evening.
Thank you very much for visiting this blog!

Today I’d like to introduce “WEA CAFE AIM” in Kayaba-cho, and what I saw on a walk in Kayaba-cho.

I visited there in last year’s November. Ummm, it’s been already nearly 2 months.
At that time, I expected to release this article in December after the series of trip to Kansai. However, the reports of Kansai trip took me more than expected until the end of 2017 as there were many things to write, and I finally reached this report now after 2 months since visiting Kayaba-cho.
Kansai trip included many historical things, so I couldn’t help writing all of them and taking time looking for detailed information.

To Kayaba-cho for treatment of gout

Now, let’s get back to the subject to the mid November in 2017.
It was the day of my treatment of gout which I do once in 2 months.

To explain for people who don’t know about gout, gout occurs because of too much uric acid in blood which looks like tiny needles.
The too much uric acid accumulates at places where the blood flow easily stagnates such as joints, and it makes the body, especially big toes in most cases, hurt badly.

In my case, it happened 10 years ago from my heel, not my toe.
It has recurred 3 times, and my knee started to hurt too since last year.

Gout is written “痛風” – “hurt wind” in Chinese letters.
It is commonly said that that’s because only a breeze hurt the place if you have gout. My colleagues used to blow to my knee and asked me, “Does it hurt?” when I first had the symptom.
“Yes, body hurts always, at the peak, without a breeze”
,.

It depends on a person, but my feeling about the pain is like a pain of a serious bruise when something touches to the diseased part, and a pain which is blunt but deep when the part is alone.
It hurts very much if I walked normally, so I had to take small steps to walk with a cane.

People often says that gout is a “disease of extravagance” because it occurs when you have too much rich foods and beer.
According to some sources from the internet, there is a historical record that Alexander the Great of Macedonia had gout which is the oldest record, and other men of great power such as Charles the Great of Frankish Kingdom, Kublai Khan of Mongol Empire, and Louis XIV of France followed as famous patients. I wonder if it’ true.

The mechanism of gout attack has not been revealed exactly yet, but it is indeed said that lifestyle habit influences it.
Based on High calorie diet, lack of exercise, and obesity, much stress to the body seemed to cause gout.

As many people says now, I think it’s true that “high calorie” and “obesity” are the key points from my experience. High calorie diet (Not like the previous generation, poor people have no choice other than taking cheap and fatty foods such as instant/fast foods, and rich people can take healthy foods now) makes the fat in the body increase, and internal organs become disable to work normally because of the fat pushing them.
It makes a lot of stress and the gout attacks (at least it applies to my case).

I have been sentenced by my doctor that I must restrict the calorie intake of a day to 1700 kcal, and lose weight to less than 70 kg. Do you know how easy it is to take 1700 kcal!?
Ummmm……, I guess that I drunk too much in my 20s…. I recommend you to be careful of your lifestyle^^;

 

Looking for restaurants serving Nihonshu while waiting for the result

Treatment of gout is to reduce the amount of uric acid in the blood by medicine, and to keep it low.
Therefore, the first thing I do at the hospital is to take out my blood for the test.

It takes about one and a half hour until the result comes out.
On the day, I decided to walk around in Kayaba-cho to check restaurants and to have some exercise for my health while waiting for the result.
I might have mentioned in another article that I worked for a stock company around Kayaba-cho until 4 years ago, so I knew about the area.
Well, when I was working in the town, I always worked until late and the salary was lower as well, so I didn’t explore the town that much^^;

Old “livedoor Securities”

My hospital is near Heisei Dori which is a street running the east side of Showa Dori, so I started to have a walk along Heisei Dori to the northeast.
Along this street,

There is the building of the famous “livedoor Securities” of Mr. Horie(“Horiemon”).
It’s a little surprising that it’s been already more than 12 years since “Livedoor Shock” (Japan’s big crash of stock prices caused by a company “livedoor” in 2006).

I had bills of “livedoor” at that time, and they all became nothing after the crash.
After their delisting, I received a bill like a testimonial, and I banked the bill to the stock company which I started to work for, later.

 

Tokyo Stock Exchange

I walked further along Heisei Dori, and

Reached “Tokyo Stock Exchange”.
There is a big sign of “JPX (JaPan eXchange)”.
This shows that they became subordinate to “Japan Exchange Group” merging with Osaka Stock Exchange in 2013.

After “JPX” was born, a new index number called “JPX Nikkei Index 400 (JPX 400)”, describing Japan’s stock price level, was established.
They intended to make the index as popular as “Nikkei Average” “TOPIX (TOkyo stock Price IndeX, Tokyo Stock Price Index)” to spread the name of “Japan Exchange – JPX”.
“ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund)” which is connected with JPX Nikkei Index 400 was listed in Tokyo Stock Exchange, and this should be why there are letters of “JOJO TOSHIN (exchange traded fund)” and “Tosho ETF” under “JPX”.

When ETF was listed, I was working for a stock company and doing jobs to decide which mutual funds to take, and I worked for this fund’s operation, too.

You might have an image that choosing mutual funds is decided by collecting various data and investigating the performance carefully by using the statistics.
However, in real, such things are done arbitrarily to give justice to the reason of the decision, or they don’t be the main factors of selection.
At the company I was working for, the investment trust’s sales activities (business entertainments, human relations, and so on) were more valuable factor.

“JPX 400” is calculated with price of stocks of the companies whose ROE is higher.
ROE is the index number to show the efficiency of profit which the company makes.
When ”JPX 400” was established, it was said that Japan would need to respect ROE as well as foreign countries.

EIt’s been more than 4 years since then, and an article of The Nikkei in March 2017 said, “ROE is likely to go up after 3 years to 8.3%”.
However, what we only see is companies which makes better profits but the workers’ earning doesn’t improve, and retained earnings becoming bigger.

The point is that the listed companies have no abilities to build up profitable business or to find investments with big return. We need to break this situation.
My opinion is that rich people understand only the surface of imported concepts such as “risk” or “compliance”, and they hesitate too much to do active investments, even though there are many interesting services, goods, and technologies.

 

What I think about economy and management

I don’t like ROE or PER, labor productivity or efficiency, and I personally think that such indexes.
It’s generally said that to improve those indexes is important for business management, and managers who can do it is good managers.
However, these % numbers bring various evil effects.

For example, “labor productivity” means the amount of the added value which one worker makes out, and the higher this number is,the higher productivity the company has.
The formula is,

Labor productivity = Added value / Employee number

Roughly saying, if the company raise their sales and profits, “added value” increases. But that is very difficult now, especially for big companies.

Therefore, what the company does is to decrease “employee number” as the denominator to make the added value bigger.
If the sales is “100”, and the employee is “50”, the labor productivity becomes 100/50=2.
Make the denominator less to 10, and the productivity becomes 100/10=10, 5 times bigger.

To reduce employee is not so hard for companies, so the managers who have no ability to raise sales and profits just reduce the number of employees to make their companies look better in the productivity.

The number can look better, but if the workers become less, the remaining workers have more duties, and that doesn’t mean that the “productivity” per a person raises.
In my case, like I explained, I worked late everyday even though my salary didn’t increase, had a gout attack, and doing the work of more than 2 people.

This is just a number for stock price, and some people lose jobs, or others lose their health and happiness, to make the number better.
What is said “scientific management” is actually a number game for better stock prices. I believe that this makes the economic disparity and locked up feelings in the society.

I know that such numbers have some meanings, but I don’t like them, and I also hate “scientific management”, which only cares about better numbers and doesn’t care the people.
The present Japan’s companies are ruled by such unkind concepts, and I think that new companies with new concepts which are kind to the people, should take over the place, and I hope so.

Well, I have such an idea, but I have no space in my mind and time for doing something for it because life is difficult when the salary is low.
It is not so easy to establish my own company to make my idea comes true.
Also, it should be more difficult to make profits than I say.

Wow, it’s already been more than 7000 letters so far.
I will write the latter part in the next blog.

 

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