This Is Japan
Explore everyday life in Japan
I'm sure many of you have heard stories about the work culture in Japan, about people working past exhaustion to death, about people working hours and hours of overtime, about the peer pressure that keeps businessmen and women in the office and teachers at schools well into the night even though they have finished their work for the day. Well, I can tell you that most of what you have heard is probably true.
Six day work weeks are very common in Japan, and when you factor in commuting time, many people leave the house before seven o'clock in the morning to go to work and don't return home until after eight or nine o'clock at night. Sundays, though, for those who do not work in the service industry at least, are generally days off. This means that Sundays are fun days in Japan. They are outing days, days when children can spend time with their fathers, who more often than not are the breadwinners in Japan, meaning that they tend to spend more time out of the home than in it.
Sundays are days when the parks and play centers fill up. They are days when going to the aquarium means looking over shoulders, past heads, and between shoulders in the hopes of glimpsing the fish that you came to see. They are days spent in cars, watching DVDs as you wait in traffic with other families who are all trying to go to the same destination. They are days where getting lunch at a nearby restaurant sometimes means waiting for longer than the time it takes to eat. They are days when excited, active children run around and their overworked, exhausted parents do their best to keep up.
This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting daily updates about life in Japan, please consider following me at @boxcarblue. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.
Hey @boxcarblue, I just read an article on RT dot com talking about this exact thing. Crazy, something like 20% of Japanese workers are at risk for death from overworking. My sister in law lives in Okinawa. When I first met her before she married a Japanese guy. She was happy, outgoing, just like a bright shooting star. She married in Japan and the last time I saw her, she looked tired, stressed and worn. Like a different person. We were chatting around the table talking about economy and work. Difference between the US and Japan. She mentioned that when you are at a certain economic level in Japan. You can just never get out of it or move up. I hope the economy turns around there. Our last visit, I saw more homeless in Tokyo than I can remember. Anyways, thank you for sharing on that. On a different note Japan playgrounds are the best! We visited one playground that had a slide that went down 5 stories high. Ziplines and all this other cool stuff. I am writing it up now and will share with you in a few days. That park you are at also looks super cool. The parks here in California are beat up. Cheers.
Hi @runrudy, married life in Japan is an entirely different topic that could cover posts and posts. I wonder if that doesn't have something to do with the change you have seen in your sister in law as well. I wanted to include a lot more about the working situations over here, but I didn't feel knowledgable enough and so I didn't get too into it. I think a big difference between Japan and America, as far as working goes, is a difference in attitude about what you are capable and not capable of, about what is possible and not possible on an individual level. You don't see people changing jobs and trying to better their conditions over here like you do in the US, and maybe that is because the work culture here is different and doing so is frowned on. I'm not really sure. I feel like being an entrepreneur of here, outside of opening your own restaurant or store, is pretty rare. I could be mistaken, though. Starting this year, they have been administering mandatory stress tests to all full-time workers in Japan to help people and companies recognize the risks they and their employees face. We'll see if that leads to any changes in the overall work culture over the coming decade. I'll have to check out that article you read. It sounds like it would be an interesting read for me.
I wished I talked to my sister in law more but you know, I hadn't seen her in a few years. My wife just mentioned that it is hard to be married to a Japanese guy. I guess the expectations of being a Japanese wife. She was born in the US so maybe her transition isn't what she expected? I don't know. Anyways. I see your point about not taking chances in Japan. If you got a job, better hold on to it. Any job is a good one even here in the United States. Thanks for continuing to post about Japan. It is topic I am very interested in. I have an idea for you. Have you ever thought about doing an article about the real estate market and the plethora of abandoned homes in Japan. Just a thought. We were toying with the idea of moving to Japan but that idea fizzled away. I hear that there is alot of vacant properties because of the baby boom or the older generation passing and the younger generation not wanting to have kids or the kids moving to the city. There are a couple blog ideas for you that I would be interested to read your point of view. Here is that article. Cheers. https://www.rt.com/news/362047-japan-death-work-karoshi/
Thank you for the ideas. I had been thinking about doing a post about the values of older houses here, but maybe I will try to do a more in-depth post about real estate in general. It will take a little research and some time, but I'll see what I can find out. I don't have a lot of experience with real estate here, but I would like to know more. If I get a post written on the subject, I'll be sure to let you know.
No pressure, just throwing out some ideas that is hard to find insight about. You are very knowledgeable and your posts are first person accounts, so it is interesting to read. Especially because we were talking about moving over. Cheers.