Name: How 1980s Japan Became History's Wildest Party | Earthquake Bird | Netflix
Uploaded: 2019-11-20T02:47:01.000Z
Duration: 7 min 14 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

there's another constant that runs through

the psychological thriller "Earthquake Bird": Japan.

Sometimes it's awe-inspiring for the characters

and sometimes it's incredibly disorienting.

because in the 1980s a massive bubble economy

A party that was about to go off the rails.

This is a taste of Japan during the bubble.

Party. That's the word that keeps coming up

even the macroeconomic parts of the story

feel like partygoers taking things just a bit too far.

This is a super-simplified version of what happened,

were selling like crazy around the world.

the US got Japan to agree to weaken the dollar

relative to the yen so that maybe, just maybe,

American goods could sell like crazy around the world too.

But in agreeing to that, Japan risked a recession.

So they slashed interest rates to prevent the yen

Seemingly everyone in Japan and their uncles

and hypercompetitive and even reckless banks

People bought land and then used that land to secure

further loans with which they bought stock and more land.

It was a buying frenzy, which you can all see in the charts.

The real estate and stock markets tripled in value

And there are these stories that make tangible

the obscene amount of wealth in Japan during the time.

It's hard to even tell if they're true or not,

but they're still revealing in how extra they are.

it's said that you had to wave a 10,000 yen bill in the air,

100 bucks, just to get a driver's attention.

If you dropped that same bill on the ground

were somehow worth more than the entire state of California.

And the land in greater Tokyo was four times more valuable

for an affordable apartment pretty difficult.

It even began to spill over as Japanese companies

starting small, just a skyscraper or two,

then graduating to golf courses, movie studies,

and finally even landmarks like Rockefeller Center.

If commercials are a window into a nation's soul,

energy drink commercial shows just how triumphant

Japan felt when they belt out stuff like this:

In bubble Japan, there was apparently a lot

of time and money spent on earthly pleasures

in nightlife districts like Ginza or Shinjuku.

Which was a fairly dramatic shift for a culture

that had previously emphasized saving and community.

Food was big, and it became increasingly extravagant.

was served sprinkled with gold dust for 500 bucks.

used their wages for, both at the height of the bubble

and of course, at the ever-popular karaoke lounge

at the site of a scene or two in "Earthquake Bird."

to give you some idea of how much people were going out,

in food and drink to their companies' expense accounts.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

How 1980s Japan Became History's Wildest Party | Earthquake Bird | Netflix

stuff

entire

reveal

tend