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Some ingenious savers have become minor stars, too.
一些聰明的儲蓄者也變成了小明星。
In recent months, blogger and life-hacker Miwa Komatsu has been making the rounds of Japan's TV talk show circuit,
最近幾個月，49歲的博主和生活駭客Miwa Komatsu一直在日本的電視脫口秀節目中頻繁出境，
explaining how she managed to sock away $100,000 over 10 years, despite making only $1,300 a month as an office worker and raising four kids on her own.
解釋她如何在10年間成功存下10萬美元，盡管她做公司職員每月只賺1300美元，還要獨自撫養四個孩子。
Her techniques, which she also describes in a 2017 memoir, include cutting tissue boxes in half so they last twice as long and using radish skins instead of paper towels to wipe down sinks.
她在2017年的自傳中也描述過自己使用的方法，其中包括把紙巾盒切成兩半，這樣它們的使用時長就變成了原來的兩倍，還有用蘿卜皮代替廚用紙巾擦拭水槽等。
"It's a game to me," the 49-year-old says.
“對我來說這是一場游戲，”她說。
"I still enjoy doing it even though money isn't that tight anymore."
“即使現在手頭不那么緊了，我仍然喜歡這樣做。”
Economist Andrea Ferrero, at the University of Oxford, was one of the first to argue that Japan's malaise is linked to something more inexorable than mindset, and that's demographics.
牛津大學的經濟學家安德魯·費雷羅是最早提出日本人的不安與某種比心態更加無法改變的東西有關的人，這就是人口統計學特征。
In a 2014 paper, "What Explains Japan's Persistent Deflation?," he and co-author Carlos Carvalho showed that aging populations exert a drag on interest rates
在2014年一篇名為《是什么解釋了日本持續的通貨緊縮？》的論文中，他和合著者卡洛斯·卡瓦略指出，人口老齡化阻礙利率變動，
and, by extension, growth—which is partly why Japan was slow to recover after real estate and stock market bubbles burst in the early 1990s.
而且經濟增長也因此受到拖累，這也是日本在上世紀90年代初，房地產和股市泡沫破裂后經濟復蘇緩慢的部分原因。
Five years on, there's a gathering consensus that this should be a warning for other advanced economies, which are also aging fast and struggling with less-than-stellar growth following the 2008 global financial meltdown.
五年過去了，人們漸漸達成共識，這應該是對其他發達經濟體的一個警告，這些經濟體在2008年全球金融危機后也在快速出現人口老齡化現象，并在不太強勁的增長中掙扎。
"For countries coming out of the crisis," Ferrero says, "this may be the moment when pressures stemming from demographics are more likely to emerge."
“對于走出危機的國家來說，”費列羅說，“這可能是由于人口統計學特征而產生的壓力，更有可能出現的時刻。”
