They were lost, but now they're found

You have probably heard that Japan has lost its last two decades (of economic growth). But the unrealistically named Eamonn Fingleton reports that he has found them: they were there all along, just where Japan put them. The Japanese government was just hiding them! Apparently, Japanese stagnation must be a media myth, because although GDP growth has been slow, the yen has improved against the American dollar during the decades previously known as lost, and its current account surplus (whatever that is) has increased fivefold (or quintupulated). Furthermore, everything in Japan is getting better all the time:

The cars on the roads, for instance, are generally much larger and better equipped than in the 1980s (indeed state of the art navigation devices, for instance, are more or less standard on many models). Overseas vacation travel has more than doubled since the 1980s. The Japanese boast the world's most advanced cell phones, and the biggest and best high-definition television screens. Japan's already long life expectancy has increased by nearly two years. Its Internet connections are some of the world's fastest -- something like ten times faster on average than American speeds.