Japanese Property Prices Rise

This datapoint flagged in the FT is interesting:

Land prices in Japan's big cities started to rise last year, the strongest sign yet that the devastating asset price collapse that followed the bursting of the country's economic bubble in the early 1990s is coming to an end.

According to a survey by the Ministry for Land, Infrastructure and Transport, residential prices in central Tokyo rose 0.9 per cent in 2004, the first rise in 17 years. Residential prices in central Osaka and Nagoya also registered positive growth.

I'd call that good news.