We're almost a month into the new fiscal year so it's high time to review any changes in the cost of living for the average person in Japan. Not counting consumer spending, for the most part the change is negligible. Premiums for national health insurance have gone up for those who belong to the kyokai kenpo system, meaning mainly employees of small and medium-sized companies, from 9.5 percent to 10 percent of salary amount, which works out, on average, to an extra ¥780 a month. The long-term nursing care insurance payments (kaigo hokenryo) for persons aged 40 to 64, whether employed or not, have increased from ¥4,516 to ¥4,697 a month. Reflecting deflationary trends, payouts of basic pension have been reduced by 0.3 percent, but premiums have gone down from ¥15,020 a month to ¥14,980. Unemployment insurance has also been cut from 1.2 percent to 1 percent of salary amount. Utilities are going up. Electric bills will increase from ¥17 to ¥42 a month for an average family, and gas bills will increase from ¥8 to ¥11 a month.

These changes won't have a major effect on the average household. But one change that may is the shift in tax rules related to the child allowance (jido teate), which was one of the central proposals of the Democratic Party of Japan's manifesto when it became the ruling party. The DPJ won on the assumption it would pay out ¥26,000 a month per child. By the time the opposition parties got through tearing the proposal apart, the amount had been cut in half, but that payout only lasted a year.

, the allowance, which used to be called kodomo teate — the change to jido was supposedly implemented to placate the Komeito Party, who originally came up with the idea years ago under that name — will pay ¥15,000 a month for a child under 3 years old; ¥10,000 a month for the first two children in a family from the age of 3 until they graduate from elementary school; ¥15,000 a month for each child after the second one in the same age group; and ¥10,000 a month for each child in junior high school.