Maybe they have high wages that equal it out? I dunno. I know that the justification for prices here in Australia (e.g. RRP of $120 for PS360 games, not that anywhere but EB Games actually tries to sell them for that) tends to be that the average wage is considerably above America's. Or maybe they have a strong rental market that makes media ownership a more specialist pursuit like in the start of the home video thing in the 80s?
This question's come up before, I think. The answer has something to do with how collecting TV shows is more of a hobbyist thing, so they expect to make a decent profit by selling to a small number of people. Japanese publishers sell movies for relatively lower prices because they already made the bulk of their profits up front. Japanese publishers do sell some shows for low prices when they don't expect to make any serious profit off of something, like how Bandai was selling re-issued volumes of Ultra Q for 1800 yen/$18-20 a pop. And even then, they sold the box set for around 21000 yen/$220. I've forgotten the details on how all this stuff works, though.
As for games, keep in mind that the used market and retail stores in Japan are a little more fluid than the ones in Europe and the US. The prices for those games are jacked up for day one profits, but tons of people flip them within a few days - and like chickdigger said, games drop in price in retail stores super quick.
Hmmm only experience I've had doing stuff over there was my 6hrs at narita airport.
A coke was like $6. That's way higher than airport prices in the states.
Yeah, stuff like that gave me a case of sticker shock when I went there once. Candy's dirt cheap, though. Priorities!
