<story><title>The Japanese art of not sleeping</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160506-the-japanese-art-of-not-sleeping</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>coldtea</author><text>So, seems like Japan is a totally unproductive country?&lt;p&gt;I mean, they work all this time, which seems like twice what an average country would do, and they&amp;#x27;re still doing ho-hum in most markets, are non-existent in most areas of modern tech, and have a huge deficit.&lt;p&gt;If it weren&amp;#x27;t for their cars and some consumer electronics stuff (that has seen its peak in the late 80s - early 90s) they&amp;#x27;d be done.</text></item><item><author>kristianc</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s an expectation that you&amp;#x27;d participate at least to some extent. There will be smaller karaoke &amp;#x2F; drinking type parties after work, and a larger &amp;#x27;nomikai&amp;#x27; meal at a large restaurant which is used to celebrate a major milestone say every month or quarter.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t really be feasible or desirable to hang out at home much.</text></item><item><author>somethingsimple</author><text>&amp;gt; after which many are expected to go out and socialize with their colleagues (karaoke etc) and get drunk until 3am.&lt;p&gt;Is it socially acceptable not to do so? Or is there high pressure from peers or superiors to do it?&lt;p&gt;When do people spend time with their families there? If they even have families...</text></item><item><author>kristianc</author><text>My impression of working in Japan around five years ago was that it felt like an economy medicated on caffeine.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t at all unusual to see rows of salarymen asleep on the subway every morning.&lt;p&gt;Japan&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s brand of this coffee accounts for an outsize proportion of their global profits (something like 12%, only sold in Japan).&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s largest media agency, at night: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;m.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=EWX6--sQtsA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;m.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=EWX6--sQtsA&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gozur88</author><text>A good friend of mine owns a corporation in Japan.  He&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;He said in Japan expectation #1 is you&amp;#x27;re at work for many hours.  You show up before your boss arrives and you go home after he leaves, unless you&amp;#x27;re out drinking with him.  Which is mostly mandatory - &amp;quot;My wife is sick&amp;quot; is an acceptable excuse.  &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m tired&amp;quot; is not.  In the big companies the people from your college class at that company all get promoted as a group, so there&amp;#x27;s a whole lot of pressure from your college friends not to do (or not do) anything that will delay their own advancement.&lt;p&gt;But when you&amp;#x27;re at work you&amp;#x27;re not expected to look for things to do.  Your boss will tell you when he needs you to do something.  If he doesn&amp;#x27;t come by and give you a task it&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s also a sort of macho culture there, where as a &lt;i&gt;salaryman&lt;/i&gt; you work incredibly long hours and deal with crazy commutes without complaining.  And if you do complain you sort of lose social points.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Japanese art of not sleeping</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160506-the-japanese-art-of-not-sleeping</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>coldtea</author><text>So, seems like Japan is a totally unproductive country?&lt;p&gt;I mean, they work all this time, which seems like twice what an average country would do, and they&amp;#x27;re still doing ho-hum in most markets, are non-existent in most areas of modern tech, and have a huge deficit.&lt;p&gt;If it weren&amp;#x27;t for their cars and some consumer electronics stuff (that has seen its peak in the late 80s - early 90s) they&amp;#x27;d be done.</text></item><item><author>kristianc</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s an expectation that you&amp;#x27;d participate at least to some extent. There will be smaller karaoke &amp;#x2F; drinking type parties after work, and a larger &amp;#x27;nomikai&amp;#x27; meal at a large restaurant which is used to celebrate a major milestone say every month or quarter.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t really be feasible or desirable to hang out at home much.</text></item><item><author>somethingsimple</author><text>&amp;gt; after which many are expected to go out and socialize with their colleagues (karaoke etc) and get drunk until 3am.&lt;p&gt;Is it socially acceptable not to do so? Or is there high pressure from peers or superiors to do it?&lt;p&gt;When do people spend time with their families there? If they even have families...</text></item><item><author>kristianc</author><text>My impression of working in Japan around five years ago was that it felt like an economy medicated on caffeine.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t at all unusual to see rows of salarymen asleep on the subway every morning.&lt;p&gt;Japan&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s brand of this coffee accounts for an outsize proportion of their global profits (something like 12%, only sold in Japan).&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s largest media agency, at night: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;m.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=EWX6--sQtsA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;m.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=EWX6--sQtsA&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kristianc</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not massively productive, and the amount of time spent at work doesn&amp;#x27;t really reflect the amount of work done. After about 5, the beers will come out.&lt;p&gt;The creative output isn&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></comment>