Chapter 1442 - 1444

"Buy it." If the wife wants something to eat, there’s nothing that can’t be bought.

As long as she doesn’t get upset about not having tea, it’s fine.

It’s Zhao Xuran’s first time trying black coffee. As soon as it entered his mouth, the first thought was, "Bitter."

Although the taste is extremely bitter, Zhao Xuran has to admit that the invigorating effect of black coffee is top-notch.

"I was a bit tired before, but after just one sip, I’m immediately alert."

"Then let’s keep some at home." Gong Ruini found Zhao Xuran’s wrinkled expression genuinely amusing.

Keep some, Zhao Xuran shook his head, showing every possible expression of disinterest, "Forget it, I’d rather drink tea."

"Strong tea wakes you up just as well."

"This stuff is something only Guang Ran would like." Zhao Xuran somewhat understood why Guang Ran would keep recommending this brand of coffee to him.

He really put a lot of thought into it, just wanting to see him make a fool of himself.

Guang Ran likes it? Well, being such a busy person, always with coffee in hand, someone who relies on either coffee or tea to stay awake, he must absolutely love this stuff.

"Then let’s not buy it and enjoy the high life instead." Gong Ruini didn’t show any sign of embarrassment.

Living the high life — if Zhao Guangran hears that, he’s probably going to cry, but who’s to blame, this guy did make quite a lot this time.

"Guang Ran said that house prices in Japan have dropped a lot this time." With the stock market plummeting, many people, to save their stocks, are rushing to sell their homes.

When everyone is trying to raise funds, how can houses be sold at a high price?

The fewer buyers there are, the lower the price drops, and for the first time, Zhao Xuran realized that the ever-resilient housing prices could fall so dramatically.

Japanese house prices falling isn’t surprising to Gong Ruini. From now on, Japan would enter a prolonged period of stagnation.

As for Japanese real estate, Gong Ruini remembered that before she traveled back, it hadn’t even recovered to its current levels.

Even a metropolis like Tokyo couldn’t compare with Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai; this illustrates the severity of the blow Japan has suffered.

"Guang Ran isn’t planning to buy property, right?" Gong Ruini wasn’t interested in how much Japanese real estate would drop; she was worried that Zhao Guangran, seeing the decline, might intend to bottom-fish in Japan’s property market.

"No way." Seeing his wife worried, Zhao Xuran quickly reassured her, "Guang Ran isn’t stupid; things over there are a complete mess right now."

According to Zhao Guangran’s assessment, imagining Japan recovering within the next decade would be overly optimistic.

More importantly, this is intended to hit them hard until they concede; otherwise, they’d consider themselves unrivaled in the world.

Although this is aimed at Japan, it reminds Zhao Xuran of many possibilities, such as if someday the domestic market develops better than the United States, would we take similar actions?

Japan is exploding now, and although the former big brother’s issues haven’t surfaced yet, are they far from collapsing?

In the financial circles, while some don’t dare make a move against the big brother, those large, well-backed financial institutions have already taken action.

Hearing that Zhao Guangran wasn’t planning on buying property gave Gong Ruini a great sense of relief, "But I think if there are good hot spring resources in a hotel, we could consider investing."

Investing in real estate is unnecessary, but investing in hot spring hotels is a good idea. Currently, there’s no tourism intention domestically, but in over ten years, when traveling abroad becomes common, tourism to South Korea and Japan will be highly popular.

"Hot spring hotels?" Zhao Xuran was rather surprised by Gong Ruini’s suggestion. Previously, her stance seemed against acquiring properties in Japan, so why the change now?

Gong Ruini nodded, "Yes, isn’t it said that bathing in hot springs is nice? If it’s cheap, we could take over one."

"We can take those wealthy individuals there for fun." The hot spring villa in Beijing is incredibly successful business-wise.

Of course, there are numerous competitors. Without strong family connections and having been the first to acquire a prime location, the business might not be this good.

"Later, we could hire some employees to get trained in Japan." Although the attitude of the hot spring villa staff is quite good, it’s undeniable that compared to Japan, there’s a significant gap.

While hardware is crucial, so is software. Gong Ruini has thought about this before; though hiring veteran employees from so-called star-rated hotels for training is an option, it’s a short-term fix.

The form is there, but it’s not ingrained. Gong Ruini doesn’t expect them to mimic Japanese service attitudes exactly but to aim for excellence.

The so-called wealthy individuals, once they have money, tend to swell with self-importance, wanting to feel like they are being treated as kings.

Sending employees to train in Japan? Zhao Xuran was taken aback by his wife’s rapid leaps of thought, "Do you know the costs involved?" with flights and their accommodation there.

But honestly, these issues are minor; the core problem is, "We don’t want to train them and then have them poached by others."

Ever since competitors emerged, Zhao Xuran has lost count of how many employees were lured away by rivals.

However frustrated Zhao Xuran was, what could he do — force them to stay?

"We don’t train them just to have them leave soon after; we’d suffer a loss."

Poaching is standard practice; in today’s world, competition involves snatching both clients and subordinates. "Set a high penalty for breaches. If they want to leave, fine, but they have to pay 200,000 each."

Gong Ruini mentioned that if anyone truly wanted to leave, she had no objections, "Besides, having a hot spring hotel in Japan as a training base, sending five to six people at a time."

"This way, we can both reduce the personnel costs there and train people."

"I’m also hoping they work hard at poaching — imagine the costs we’d incur."

Gong Ruini expressed that if it wouldn’t make their company seem like a place where talent is easily poached, she’d actually hope for more poaching to happen.

A breach penalty of 200,000 per person? Even someone as knowledgeable as Zhao Xuran was stunned by Gong Ruini’s idea, though he soon found himself giving her endless thumbs-ups.

"Then we really won’t be losing money." Zhao Xuran was delighted, "Let them poach."

"Let them try poaching — they think we’re pushovers." Zhao Xuran was indeed eager and ready to seize the opportunity to teach those people a lesson.

"I’ll talk to Guang Ran about this."

"We’ve made quite a bit of money in Japan, so we can’t not contribute. We should at least contribute to lowering Japan’s unemployment rate."

That statement was spot on, and Gong Ruini, beside him, nodded continuously, in full agreement; if possible, Gong Ruini would like to purchase farms raising Wagyu cattle.

But this remains just a thought; if they really attempted to get involved with Japanese Wagyu, who knows how the Japanese would react explosively.

Hot spring hotels are a safer bet — there are plenty in Japan, so buying more would raise no eyebrows.