NEWSWEEK’s Tokyo correspondent Bill Powell calculates that the Japanese will actually get their money back quickly. Here’s how: in late September, nearly two months after the invasion of Kuwait, oil prices shot up to $34 a barrel. They have since dropped to around $19 a barrel, and oil experts say that they’re likely to fall lower as Kuwaiti production comes back onstream. If you take the $15-a-barrel differential between September and now and multiply it by Japan’s daily consumption of 3.6 million barrels, it comes to a savings of $54 million a day. At that rate, the Japanese will recoup their investment in slightly over 240 days. In a year, the savings comes to $19.7 billion–or a return of 51 percent on a $13 billion investment. And that certainly beats the return on Treasury bills.