Actually, not true. Japanese real estate prices are still well down from their peak 21 years ago. and read this fascinating article from 2006, which was remarkable considering what has happenned since then.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/world/europe/03iht-tulips.html
Excerpts;
Like-minded experts include Christopher Mayer of Columbia University and Joseph Gyourko and Todd Sinai of the Wharton School, who focus on what they call "superstar cities," places so desirable that they not only are not headed for a correction but they also can sustain "ever-increasing" prices compared with less-sought-after cities.
What such optimists are missing, Shiller says, is a long,historical perspective. "The fundamentals that they cite in support of their reassuring assessments are surprisingly weak at explaining historical prices," he writes in a recent paper. Reading the data as an economist leads Shiller to conclude that the market will go south. In addition, he says that studying the erratic but rhythmic rising and falling of prices over time - in other words, acting more like a historian than an economist - reinforces this conclusion.
"Looking at the Herengracht data is very instructive," he said, "because you can see 50-year intervals of growth, then it turns around.
......
But what does "up" mean? The most surprising thing about Eichholtz's study is that it contradicts a maxim of the real-estate profession. "There is a myth which says that real-estate values go up significantly over time, and that this is especially true for central city locations," Eichholtz said. "When I began to study the Herengracht, I didn't know what I would find, but the data ended up challenging that myth."
That is to say, where everyone from your wise old uncle to the broker who sold you your house holds it as gospel that real estate is one of the best long- term investments, this longest of long- term indices suggests that, on the contrary, it sort of stinks. Between 1628 and 1973 (the period of Eichholtz's original study), real property values on the Herengracht - adjusted for inflation - went up a mere 0.2 percent per year, worse than the stingiest bank savings account. As Shiller wrote in his analysis of the Herengracht index, "Real home prices did roughly double, but took nearly 350 years to do so."