A new way of measuring the yen's weakness?

This site often looks at the cost of living in Japan, so I thought an article I read today might interest the community here! There's a new and interesting way of looking at the yen's weakness, and it involves none other than katsu curry.

An employee from the Bank of New York Mellon (an American financial services company) created the Katsu Curry Index as an alternative to The Economist's Big Mac Index, which some of you may have already heard of. Instead of comparing burger prices around the world, he uses katsu curry from CoCo Ichibanya to look at purchasing power.

The numbers are pretty interesting, too. With the US dollar trading at around ¥159.23 according to the Japan Times article I linked above, the Katsu Curry Index suggests that a dollar should actually buy around ¥62.18 based on purchasing power. The Big Mac Index puts the figure at ¥80.30. Basically, it suggests that the yen is extremely undervalued compared with what it can actually buy in Japan.

It highlights something I think many of us living here have no doubt noticed already. The weak yen isn't only an issue when checking the exchange rate before traveling overseas. Prices for everyday goods and services have been rising, but salaries paid in yen don't stretch as far as they used to.