Ironically, the election of Donald Trump has helped - at least in the short term - by devaluing the yen against the dollar. But, at best, this is an unreliable quick fix for a longer term malaise. A lower currency might also be particularly shortlived depending on how the markets respond to President Trump actually carrying out his threats on trade.

And that leaves Japan in a tough economic spot. That's despite the vibrancy of the streets, restaurants and offices in Tokyo, the traditional middle class lives of most Japanese and the traditional strengths of Japanese manufacturing. There's no sense of crisis evident, more a mood of stability.

But the problem is not just that Japan's debt is climbing towards 250 per cent of GDP. It's that the gap between spending and revenue shows no sign of narrowing despite the fact that servicing that debt already accounts for nearly quarter of the annual budget expenditure.

That's compounded by social security payments for the elderly already taking up another third of spending, a percentage which can only grow given the bulge of retiring baby boomers. In Japan, it's called "the silver democracy" to reflect the power of the senior citizen vote, increasing political reluctance to cut benefits no matter how unsustainable the system looks.

At the same time, corporate Japan has proven equally reluctant to invest at home despite rising profits and reduced corporate tax rates. Nor, despite constant Government admonitions, are most businesses passing any more money onto consumers via increased wages or to shareholders via increased dividends. Instead, Japanese corporates are either sitting on the cash or using the money to (increasingly and successfully) expand offshore. Japanese consumers are, for their part, largely sitting on their hands too.

The Bank of Japan took Abe's message to heart,with aggressive monetary easing pumping in trillions of yen into and determinedly manipulating the ten year bond rate to hold at around zero. That's supposed to be in place until inflation reaches two per cent – a constantly receding finishing line. The government is getting away with the cost of its debt repayments and the Bank of Japan's massive bond buying program because the debt is entirely domestically held and because interest rates have been so low.

It means Abe's promise to balance the budget by 2020 looks even less credible than Australian budget estimates. The notion of further raising Japan's consumption tax – or GST - from its current rate of eight per cent has already been postponed twice with few believing the Abe government will proceed with the latest 2019 deadline.

And in terms of the promised structural economic reforms and reduction in regulation, it's still definitely Abenomics- lite. It's also why Abe championed the Trans Pacific Partnership to keep up the pressure. Abe's success in politics still relies on incrementalism. One modest policy shift has been a quiet willingness to allow in targeted immigration – such as more aged care workers from places like the Philippines. The government is also trying to women back into the workforce – overcoming the predilection for women to stop work to raise a family for a mix of cultural, tax and childcare reasons. It's slow going.

The stock market tells part of the story. The market's glory days of Japan's bubble economy in the 1980s are now now a distant dream. Although it's improved under Abe's prodding, the Nikkei is still worth less than half it was way back in 1989.

Japan is not alone in the frustrating struggle of many countries to stimulate growth and investment despite spending all that taxpayer money – but Japan's at the extreme edge of the dilemmas that lie ahead. How and whether it can make all this add up will become a model, for better or worse.

Jennifer Hewett is in Japan as a guest of the Japanese government.