The cost of living in Japan weighs heavily on everyone, but those of us who have come from other countries feel it more acutely -- we remember apples so cheap you'd think they grew on trees.
If you yearn for some cold, hard facts to verify a suspicion that it's nearly impossible to maintain a profitable margin living in Tokyo, you can turn to "Japan 2000: An International Comparison."
Produced by the Keizai Koho Center, or Japan Institute for Social and Economic Affairs, the slight book -- pocket-size and just 120 pages -- is packed full of data presented in graphs and charts. It's a handy tool for journalists, analysts, trend trackers and statistics junkies.