I can only speak from the people I've met personally, but: Older people are worried that all of Japans 'gijyutsu' is going to China now (which literally means,

I can only speak from the people I've met personally, but: Older people are worried that all of Japans 'gijyutsu' is going to China now (which literally means, art, or craft, but basically they mean, all making-new-stuff skills are going to china now). Especially the retired folk seem really concerned about it. Young people complain like crazy they can't get decent jobs. I think you'd be hard pushed to find someone who are generally speaking positive about the Japanese economy over there. I certainly didn't encounter anyone (Japanese) who was positive about it when I was there (a year ago now), or met anyone who has been here since. It'd be pretty interesting to see some japanese news paper / blog sentiment analysis work and see how wide spread that goes in general. You could probably use kanji as a pretty decent marker (negative words tend to make common elements, etc). hm...