Saturday, November 22, 2003

International comparisons

I watched the World Cup final in a pub in Balham, London. I had three pints of beer. These cost £1.59 each, and together they cost the equivalent of A$12. I watched the semi-final in a faux Irish pub in Shibuya. During this I had two pints of beer, each of which cost about as much as all three put together did here in London. (They were ¥800 each).

This isn't a fair comparison between Tokyo and London, of course. I know London well, and that includes knowledge of where to get a cheap beer. And although I was in a perfectly nice part of London, it was not central and not all that upmarket, whereas I watched the match in Tokyo in a neighbourhood that was both these things. If I had watched the game in a theme pub in an expensive part of London, my pints of beer would have cost about £2.80 ($A7.00) or so each, still less than Tokyo, but not by so huge a margin

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