Labor protection is much, much stronger in Japan than the US, or many other first-world nations, for that matter. It's not that simple. Although permanent emp

Labor protection is much, much stronger in Japan than the US, or many other first-world nations, for that matter. It's not that simple. Although permanent employees can't be fired easily, dispatched workers and temps are a significant (and growing) proportion of the workforce and may be fired at will. We don't have long vacations like in some European countries, nor do we have "sick days" (lots of national holidays, though). Some companies put a cap on overtime pay (not on overtime work), some smaller ones don't pay it at all. And so on. You're right about the law being on the worker's side. Most people won't sue, though. As for self-employment I can't imagine it's much harder, I think it's not hard bureaucracy-wise, except for potential visa problems. I wonder how Patrick will deal with that (I once had an offer to work as contractor but had to reject in part because of visa headaches). Many translators are self-employed. But I don't know anyone working in IT that is self-employed, probably because most Japanese companies don't like to hire individual IT contractors. Or maybe my sample is too small.