In today’s Asahi Shimbun, there is a article bemoaning the rise in petrol prices in Japan. It explains that due to the weak Yen and rising crude oil prices, “regular gasoline now costs 137 yen per liter“. At current exchange rates, this is equivalent to approximately 57p per litre in Britain.

Currently, in Britain, petrol costs around 92p per litre, more than 1.5 times that in Japan. It seems that despite significant rises in petrol costs, the Japanese still get it much cheaper.

As was noted in the article, there is the weak Yen to be considered. So this doesn’t take into account how much this is in real terms to a normal consumer. To take this into account, we should adjust the figures for the average national wage:

Country	Average Wage in 2006 £	Source
Japan	17,000	Japan Times Feb 2007
UK	23,244	National Statistics online

Using these figures as a basis, we can see that with a year’s wages, an average Japanese wage earner could still buy approximately 29,824 litres of fuel while a British person could buy only 25,265 litres of petrol for the same year’s work.

This shows that, despite a weak Yen and a rise crude oil prices, in terms of average wages, petrol in Britain is still 18% more expensive than in Japan.