My impression of working in Japan around five years ago was that it felt like an economy medicated on caffeine.
Work goes on from 8am - 9pm, after which many are expected to go out and socialize with their colleagues (karaoke etc) and get drunk until 3am. Rinse and repeat, most days of the week. It wasn't at all unusual to see rows of salarymen asleep on the subway every morning.
Japan's most popular drink is a brand of canned coffee which is on sale everywhere and in the vending machines that line the streets. Coca Cola's brand of this coffee accounts for an outsize proportion of their global profits (something like 12%, only sold in Japan).
All of this seems to be totally okay and accepted despite the obvious impact on productivity of regularly going for long periods without sleep. This is the offices of Dentsu, Japan's largest media agency, at night: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX6--sQtsA
> Japan's most popular drink is a brand of canned coffee which is on sale everywhere and in the vending machines that line the streets. Coca Cola's brand of this coffee accounts for an outsize proportion of their global profits (something like 12%, only sold in Japan).
Yet another strange Japan-related fact. That is an insane amount of coffee.
Yep, it has about 20 different SKUs, from Emerald Mountain Blend (the common, all Garden classic version) to Georgia Black to Georgia Max Coffee (basically an iced Caramel Machiatto). The insane profitability is largely due to the distribution model - Coke just has to strike a deal with the vending machine bottlers and it can get 200m units to market quickly. Recently the market share has been eroded by the likes of Kirin and Suntory, who run their own competing brands. I know this as Georgis is one of the accounts I worked on.
It's interesting that canned coffee is very popular in Asia (or that's my experience from SE Asia, Nestle seems to be the most popular there), but not in the western world.
Canned and cartoned(!) coffee is all over the place now in the UK. Starbucks make a lot of it, and there seems to be quite a few smaller brands popping up.
It's all full of sugar though, more like slightly coffee flavoured milkshakes. Combination of the sugar and caffeine really works though...
There's an expectation that you'd participate at least to some extent. There will be smaller karaoke / drinking type parties after work, and a larger 'nomikai' meal at a large restaurant which is used to celebrate a major milestone say every month or quarter.
You would probably be expected to participate in the larger one, whereas particpating in less of the smaller ones would become adverse career wise over time. Drinking is theoretically optional.
Typically family time seemed to be at weekends, and heavily focused on getting out and about into the countryside etc. The apartments are so small that it wouldn't really be feasible or desirable to hang out at home much.
So, seems like Japan is a totally unproductive country?
I mean, they work all this time, which seems like twice what an average country would do, and they're still doing ho-hum in most markets, are non-existent in most areas of modern tech, and have a huge deficit.
If it weren't for their cars and some consumer electronics stuff (that has seen its peak in the late 80s - early 90s) they'd be done.
A good friend of mine owns a corporation in Japan. He'd worked in the US for a decade or so before going home to start his own business, so he was in a pretty good position to compare the work cultures.
He said in Japan expectation #1 is you're at work for many hours. You show up before your boss arrives and you go home after he leaves, unless you're out drinking with him. Which is mostly mandatory - "My wife is sick" is an acceptable excuse. "I'm tired" is not. In the big companies the people from your college class at that company all get promoted as a group, so there's a whole lot of pressure from your college friends not to do (or not do) anything that will delay their own advancement.
But when you're at work you're not expected to look for things to do. Your boss will tell you when he needs you to do something. If he doesn't come by and give you a task it's perfectly reasonable to sit at your desk and do nothing. As an employer or manager you are not supposed to run your people ragged, either. My friend spent most of every morning going around to each employee and making sure they had something to do, but not so much it would reflect badly on him as an employer.
In the end he figured Americans and Japanese people get about the same amount of work done every day. The social dynamics are totally different, though. In Japan your work is like a second family.
There's also a sort of macho culture there, where as a salaryman you work incredibly long hours and deal with crazy commutes without complaining. And if you do complain you sort of lose social points.
It's not massively productive, and the amount of time spent at work doesn't really reflect the amount of work done. After about 5, the beers will come out.
The creative output isn't great either. Agencies like Dentsu are the size they are because of relationships, and that there will be someone there to answer the phone any time of the day or night, rather than out of any creative brilliance.
Dentsu are an example of a big Japanese company that has recently started to work with Western companies to in effect, outsource the innovation and creative ideas bit.
Your analysis is correct - once Japan lost its supply chain supremacy they were never likely to be able to win back the advantage by producing higher quality goods and services.
>Your analysis is correct - once Japan lost its supply chain supremacy they were never likely to be able to win back the advantage by producing higher quality goods and services.
Would you say the Chinese are somewhat different in this regard?
I have a feeling they can have more knack for this going forward.
The Chinese have the Shanzai model, which almost embraces the 'copycat' phenomenon to drive innovation. It's a very very open culture where everyone publishes their bill of materials and design specs, and any other company can use them. No patents.
Working for a Shanzhai company, in financial technology no less, with personal origins far from this, I agree somewhat. It is an open culture, but built with tape and plasterboard.
Innovation is easy when iterating, but such organisational culture has little push for true 'innovation'. 'Shanzhai' as a term was considered fun 5 years ago, but today is taken as an insult when such companies are CMMI5 approved. 'Innovation' is a new buzz word adopted in China over the past 2 years replacing shanzhai.
The very very open culture also results in very very quick quick releases of employees that don't maintain sufficient updates and success stories to company owners, roughly on a 2-week basis, and major breakthrough every quarter. That's not a culture for innovation, but iterating someone else's idea.
China seems to be heading to a fairly low per capita economy with serious long term issues. They have lots of land and a large population so they can project political power, but massive corruption at every level has huge negative implications. As does the looming political unrest.
The country has no natural resources to export, and had to start from scratch in 1945, so they're not doing that awful. They're not the be-all end-all, but it's still impressive what they've accomplished. The biggest problem they're facing is demographics: very few babies, and very little immigration.
Economically they are actually doing fairly well adjusted for natural resources and demographics. Arguably they could improve things through immigration, but looking at population density shrinking there population long term is probably a good thing.
PS: Don't forget GDP is a somewhat meaningless number in peacetime, it's per capita GDP that people notice. Their real issue is an unstistanable public debt.
My experience (a few periods in the late 90s to mid 2000s) was high pressure for locals working for Japanese firms, less so for foreigners or locals working for foreign firms. The informal drinking (where junior workers can "say anything" to the boss and blame it on the alcohol) was a counter-balance to the formality of the work, where juniors would never contradict their seniors. For the formality to work, you need and outlet. It's the way the culture balances formality and relationships. Bosses are expected to be available to hear from their employees after hours. If they aren't, they won't be respected, or know what's really going on.
In some cases the family relationships have a strict division of labor: Dad works and Mom raises the family. Two very distinct lives. In more traditional companies and families it can look bad to come home from work by 6. (Are you no longer important?) In other cases the forced socializing eases up somewhat over the years, or the parents find work in smaller or foreign companies.
In many offices, the majority of the employees start at about 10 am or even later. Also, most people people prefer to go home using public transportation, which stops relatively early (in most places, between midnight and 1:00 am). Extroverts like to socialize, introverts less so. Personally, I fall into the latter camp, but I usually find it to be invigorating and educational when I do "participate." Those with families often "bow out" (no pun intended), although I can see that with some groups, there might be peer pressure. If one has a long commute, that can be a perfect excuse to not participate or to leave early.
No, it's fine if you just drink tea non-alcoholic beer. You just have to act the part. At least at my wife's company it's fine (it may help she has the excuse of having to drive)
Oh, amphetamines were huge in Japan for a long time, especially during wwii and the postwar period of recovery, and while the government cracked down on drugs in a major way after the fifties, meth is still probably the top drug in Japan.
But this cannot be true for all industries, can it? I mean, there are industries where Japanese products are the leaders in terms of quality and reliability. I don't believe those are primarily staffed with workers who sleep that little.
The photos you see of people sleeping on the stairs, etc are probably late-night drunks, not inemuri
The phenomenon described is real, but people do it more slumped over on the train, meetings, etc. not sprawled out on the sidewalk.
Furthermore, it extends beyond salarymen on trains; my wife & teenage daughter both do it simply as a way of life almost. They could go to bed at a decent hour but usually stay up late & catnap instead.
> They could go to bed at a decent hour but usually stay up late & catnap instead.
My wife (as a Japanese salarywoman) is perpetually tired, but still stays up late watching TV/SNS. Why? "If I went to bed early, my whole life would just be work and sleep"
I love the Japanese culture and I've lived there for a while.
Personally, what most shocked me is how accepted and common this is.
To the point that when I friend came to study to Spain she asked me: "Why is no one sleeping in the library?"
On the other side, I believe it's also dangerous. I visited Malaysia with my gf, and she would fall asleep in every train and taxi because it's just what they do.
I live in Tokyo and I think it's great. You can often see people at McDonalds early in the morning after a night out catching a nap before the trains start running. Just buy a coffee or something, grab a table, take an hour nap -- great. And this is Japan so you don't have to worry about your stuff getting stolen! Even if you sleep at the train station!
I also commonly see people taking naps during lunchtime in Starbucks. Someone will come in, grab a coffee, take a nap for 30 min, drink the coffee and go back to work. There's nothing wrong with that! (other than I want the table :P)
Unfortunately the corporate culture is not where it should be. There are some companies that want to be like western startups where taking a nap on the office sofa wouldn't raise an eyebrow but those are very rare. In most Japanese companies it would be totally unacceptable to sleep in the office.
They're cultures that you can see "see people at McDonalds early in the morning after a night out" all the time, without having to go there directly from working late...
It is great that you can safely take a nap in a public space without fear of being robbed or worse (as one would have to fear outside Japan), without having police called on you, and with general public acceptance of such action.
Nobody will think you're a bum or a mad or look at you funny. Try that somewhere else and let's see what happens!
Japanese corporate culture is terrible and that is sad. I don't have an answer to that.
Right, but as the article points out, that's socially different. Working at your desk and succumbing to sleep is tolerated whereas stretching out on the couch with the intent to sleep is not.
This is really great. I wish we could have a similar amount of trust in all countries but it seems rather unlikely.
In all the coffeeshops in Austin, Texas at least, I've seen baristas wake up customers who are napping. But I understand why they do that: there are many homeless people around and if anyone could just take naps...
My first reaction would be: that must be very (physically) unhealthy. But then you see that Japan's life expectancy is pretty high, around 83 years, and you wonder if it really has a negative impact. I suppose there are other measures of physical health than life expectancy, but still...
In Western terms, I would say it's "bad" from a happiness/relaxation perspective. Not really from the lack of sleep; while I wouldn't say I go as far as the Japanese, I do tend to sleep less than most people... just that all the social machinations around it: e.g. "succumbing" to sleep as a measure of looking virtuous/like a hard worker in front of your peers, for example. I find things like that exhausting and the need to do that would significantly decrease my level of happiness.
But that's just it: happiness is subjective. What makes me happy or unhappy need not be even remotely related to what makes someone else the same. As much as I may think it's weird or undesirable, all that really matters is that the people who live like that are happy with their lives. It's only a problem if they're not.
That type of "work hard play hard" is a pretty common pattern at universities in the US. Not necessarily all the time, but a couple times a week it can be awesome. The big caveat obviously is you have to be the usually extroverted type of person who likes to go out and get rowdy with your friends.
The article frequently makes it clear, I thought, that it was napping in social situations. In the workplace, in a meeting, at a conference, during a school lesson, out with your friends in a restaurant. That is surprising, unusual and often seen as being bad.
So the key phrase is "explicitly socially acceptable"?
I often see people napping in all of the above, both here in Russia, around Eastern Europe and in South America. And it's no big deal most of the times.
And things like sleeping on the bus/train or sitting on a bench seem to be normal all over the world.
The catch is, i never been to either Japan or USA, so i can't set the zero properly.
In my experience in most parts of the USA and Canada at least (and I'd guess in many places in Northern Europe), napping in public places is frowned on except in pretty specific cases - parks, beaches, etc where the purpose of being there is to relax.
Of course you do see it on public transit in the early and late hours at times, and it's not a big deal, but its definitely not 'normal'. Napping at work is especially frowned upon, with perhaps the exception of someone going out to the park during lunch time.
The general feeling/culture (not necessarily my personal opinion) is that you should have had enough sleep the night before so that you can be productive for the day's work. If you've stayed up so late (partying or whatever) the night before such that you need rest during the day, you're short-changing your employer and teammates. A nap might be the right thing to do to restore your energy, but you should not have put yourself in that position to start with.
Of course these days I don't need to stay up half the night to feel like I need a nap in the afternoon... :)
[edit] After reading the article, I see that the Japanese culture connects the tiredness with working hard/late, which changes the perception. I think in the US and Canadian culture this can happen in some extreme cases - we've all heard (or lived) stories of people working like crazy to meet project deadlines, and sleeping in the office, etc. And road-warriors fighting jet lag are often given some credit for that tired/haggard look. Blue collar workers are more prone to given respect for being particularly tired at the end of the day, but napping or dozing off is still not really rewarded/honored like it seems to be in Japan, because of the quite different work-time expectations.
I spent a year studying in university in Japan, taking engineering classes with regular students. The number of people sleeping in class was sometimes impressive - in the worst instance I remember it was about a third of the class (but thankfully, usually a lot less). The professor just ignored them and kept going.
The real shock for me was when I went back to Canada and realized I'd picked up the habit inadvertently! I would naturally fall asleep in some boring classes and had a lot of difficulty stopping that. Generally the prof would notice and call me out to everyone's amusement, or a neighbor would give me a nudge. It really did not feel acceptable to sleep in class as in Japan.
Sleeping in public is pretty weird in the US. Napping at work is definitely frowned upon, and napping in a coffee shop, public transportation, etc, is unusual but happens. It's not necessarily socially discouraged, just odd.
Honestly, it never really occurred to me that people sleep in public in other parts of the world.
And when it does happen in the US, you start to worry if the person is having difficulties, and whether you should help them by waking them up. Especially on trains.
I used to set my alarm on the Caltrain and sleep during my commute to the south bay every day. If someone like you had ever woken me up, I'd have been pissed. In months of commuting before I moved down to Mountain View, nobody ever did see fit to rob me of my precious last hour of morning sleep though...
That's right. I live in the US and never saw any problem with napping in the college library, but one time I fell asleep out in my car while waiting for my child's class to end, and someone woke me to see if I was ok. Well I was just fine until you woke me, thanks!
I remember the first time I visited Tokyo. The subway to Shinjuku station was packed. People seemed annoyed by my bags. We were really crammed in. Someone remarked to me that it was "rush hour" for people going home from their offices.
10pm on a weeknight is around when the post-drinking going home rush hour starts. The last and second to last trains are miserable experiences for me since they reek of alcohol and I'm terrified of someone projectile vomiting on me.
A guy I know from Tokyo witnessed just such an event. He was on a train so packed you couldn't move, and when one of the commuters started yakking on his neighbor neither of them could move, so the victim had to just sit there and take it.
Are the pavements really that clean or is that photo with the stairs just unrealistic?
I guess it's possible, although that would require near constant vacuuming.
Generally they are kept very clean and the photo is not at all unrealistic. The cultural norm is to never litter, instead if necessary trash is taken home with you to dispose of for example.
That said, what might contribute to the cleanliness in the photo though is that it was possibly taken after the last train (all trains stop after around midnight), so it's not unlikely the stairs are exceptionally clean because they had just been cleaned before.
On a slightly unrelated note regarding having to be vacuumed constantly, the stairs being clean and the extremely low rate of unemployment in japan might not be unrelated, and on topic it might also not be unrelated to the prevalence of sleeping in situations that would be utterly unacceptable in other countries, such as meetings :)
When we were in Kyoto, we could see a homeless man with a sleeping bag from our window. He would smoke a cigarette and carefully shake the ash into a soda can, presumably for later disposal, rather than onto the sidewalk.
The stairs are not clean or rather there are plenty of unclean stairs in Japan. Relative to other cities I'm not sure. None of the stations smell like piss like SF and Paris at least
Some are, some aren't. Busy exists in Shibuya (or other busy junctions) for instance will be clean-enough but not that clean. There's an insane amount of people passing through after all. Small stations even in central Tokyo -- yes, they will be this clean.
Someone from Germany please correct me, but aren't you required to keep the street in front of your house clean? I was amazed at how clean Germany was, then I went to Switzerland, even cleaner. Amazing.
Switzerland is pretty clean, and it's largely due to the Swiss culture, and the fact that there's plenty of bins which are regularly cleaned and emptied.
However
There's one class of people who believe that it's their God given right to litter wherever and whenever they want, and that's smokers.
You can especially see it around Tram stops where people are waiting around and will quite happily throw their cigarette butts on the ground or pavement when the tram approaches.
This seems like a simplification. Surely some Japanese prefer to try to get a good night's sleep, or would rather their colleagues didn't need to nap during a meeting.
Anyway, napping is something most cultures appreciate. Just seems we don't accommodate it as well as the Japanese.
this is why the culture we have in the us, uk and other countries like it is so important. in countries like japan and korea nobody feels as though they can say or do anything on their own. they have to do what is expected of them. is it any surprise that they all end up throwing their health into the toilet under that kind of system?
In a corporate environment, this is not much different than it is in America. Also, if you own a small business, you never have to participate in corporate tribalism. I've met plenty of people who own internet cafes, fried chicken deliveries, anime stores, etc. who slept reasonable hours.
the only countries that are higher than it are developing countries and south korea, which has the same cultural problem. you cant just throw a wikipedia page at me with no context and expect me to revise my views. especially when you punctuate a declaration with a question mark like a twelve year old. japan has a high suicide rate. deal with it.
Your original phrase is factually incorrect. Had you said what's actually true instead of exaggerating for effect, you might have gotten a different answer. And about context, question marks and twelve year olds, that's rather out of place and it's exactly what you did with your original phrase.
its nitpicking. everyone knows the japanese have a very high suicide rate. i could have pointed out that the japanese are not the healthiest people in the world. the healthiest people in the world are singapore, italy and australia. but i didnt point that out because everyone knows that the japanese are very healthy. these details are not relevant.
Work goes on from 8am - 9pm, after which many are expected to go out and socialize with their colleagues (karaoke etc) and get drunk until 3am. Rinse and repeat, most days of the week. It wasn't at all unusual to see rows of salarymen asleep on the subway every morning.
Japan's most popular drink is a brand of canned coffee which is on sale everywhere and in the vending machines that line the streets. Coca Cola's brand of this coffee accounts for an outsize proportion of their global profits (something like 12%, only sold in Japan).
All of this seems to be totally okay and accepted despite the obvious impact on productivity of regularly going for long periods without sleep. This is the offices of Dentsu, Japan's largest media agency, at night: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX6--sQtsA