Wednesday’s paper contained my piece about an experience, familar in Japan, which seems to be about to impose itself upon Britain: living with deflation.

One reader complains that I must have got it all wrong – on a visit to Japan in December, Peter of Phuket reports, everything was “horrendously expense”. This is a natural misunderstanding. For, while the cost of living for Japanese has unquestionably remained very stable, for short term visitors, and those of us long-termers who are paid in sterling, it depends not on inflation or deflation, but on the foreign exchange rate.

If you spend yen purchased with pounds then you are the slave of an exchange rate which changes day by day. When the British currency is strong, you get lots of yen for each of your pounds, and Japan is cheap. When the pound is weak, the opposite is the case.

Since the financial crisis last autumn, the pound has been weak. Not just a little tired, or even rather exhausted, but completely shagged out and barely able to open its lips and croak for help. Against the yen it is lower than it has been for thirty years. For those of us spending sterling, the effect is dramatic.

In 2007 one pound bought Â¥235 (on average – some of the time it was higher still). As of this writing, according to XE.com, it is worth Â¥133 yen (and the rate actually offered by a credit card company or high street bank is worse still). In other words the pound is worth 57 per cent of what it used to be. Which is to say that anyone paid in pounds has experienced a 43 per cent pay cut.

I don’t like to whinge, but this kind of thing really concentrates the mind. A few examples: