Stop seeing Japan as a wasteland.
The country's economy, the world's third largest, still matters. Japan isn't stuck in a hopeless demographic-driven hole without escape. Rather, the three decades since the bubble burst have had their ups and downs.
Look at the fourth-quarter gross domestic product numbers published last Thursday. They aren't brilliant; they aren't terrible. What makes them interesting is their ordinariness: Most major industrial economies had, at best, a tepid end to 2018. Japan has company.