Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe
見出しに注目してください。"Mrs. Watanabe"は別名"Kimono Trader"と呼ばれる「個人の小口外国為替証拠金取引（FX）投資家」のことでしたね。これは海外でも比較的よく知られる代表的な日本人名（Tanabeではないのが残念！）を使ったThe Economistが命名したものと考えられますが，ここの記事では奥さんだけではなく，だんなさん（Mr. Watanabe）も加わっているのです。さてはて，このフレーズもよく知られるようになるのでしょうか。ちなみにワタナベ夫妻が実際のクルーズに出かけるわけではありません。記事をごらんください。（UG）
Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe Take An Aussie-Dollar ‘Dream Cruise’
As the Bank of Japan floods the country with easy money, Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe are taking an Aussie-dollar dream cruise.
The proverbial Japanese couple aren’t boarding a luxury cruise ship, though. They’re piling onto another boat: Japan’s first Australian dollar-denominated life insurance product–the Dream Cruise–offered by Mitsui Life Insurance Co., one of the country’s largest life insurers.
The new product was prompted by Japan’s rock-bottom interest rates, said Naoyuki Yamazaki, general manager of Mitsui Life’s profits center and product department. “With yen-denominated products, we can only offer our customers an assumed interest rate of somewhere between 1% and 1.5%,” he said.
The Dream Cruise offers much sunnier prospects. Buyers of the basic package pay 165.60 Australian dollars (US$164) a month, which Mitsui Life manages in Australian assets. The company currently guarantees a 3.2% interest rate, which is adjusted automatically every 15 years, based on the prevailing rate on 10-year Australian government bonds, with a minimum 2.5%.
Mitsui Life began offering the Dream Cruise on April 1. Mr. Yamazaki wouldn’t reveal sales figures but did say they’ve topped forecasts. “Since it’s a new product, we thought we’d see a gradual increase in sales, but the increase has been pretty steep,” he said.
