With cheap prices Japan's new mantra, 5,000 people lined up recently outside a 15-story discount mall in Osaka, eagerly awaiting the grand opening.

"It would have had a 'for rent' sign on it and it might have been another discount mall rather than an area of any economic activity," he said.

After a mortgage default and an auction, it was reinvented as a discount mall, with stores like Payless Shoes.

Recently, however, the lines between flea markets, antique shows, green markets, craft shows and discount malls have blurred considerably.

BUT even among the unemployed in this working-class city, where the job market improved with the recent opening of a huge discount mall, the economy breeds optimism.

Merchants expressed confidence that the mall would survive the loss although it might become a discount mall.

Now comes the virtual discount mall, offering workers everything from books to car insurance at up to 10 percent off, right on their office computer screens.

The Hardens go to the discount malls five or six times a year.

For now, except for a discount mall near London that he has bought into, no new real estate investment seems enticing.

Then one developer built a discount mall and another built a hotel and an industrial park, and the land was transformed.