Disclaimer: I live in Japan, I'm Canadian. My girlfriend works at Proto, a company that produces a bunch of entertainment-related websites. Large company, 10k

Disclaimer: I live in Japan, I'm Canadian. My girlfriend works at Proto, a company that produces a bunch of entertainment-related websites. Large company, 10k people. Between meetings and actual work, she spends approximately 15 hours a DAY at work. This is not abnormal. Another friend who works at a kindergarden works 6 days a week (sunday is spent preparing lessons) and about the same (15-16 hours a day). Read that again, tell me how that is not "counterproductive". In my girlfriend's case, the meetings alone take up 3-4 hours in a day. She leaves at 7 AM and often gets back after midnight. And for what? So that the world can find out the latest gossip about Korean dramas with an easy-to-use GUI? While working on my startup, I took a small contract at Fujitsu. I was responsible for cleaning up the translations on some of their cell phones (the Docomo F1100 being the main one - a story for another day). I had a chat with some people there and they told me how the game works; Fujitsu gives a small salary, and pays overtime. As a result, average workers sit around for half the day, then work like nuts during overtime to finish their work. A lot of younger workers realize this is madness, but keep in mind that the people in charge generally came up during a worker shortage in the "bubble" era. These were less competent people who now have seniority in a seniority-based system. Can you imagine how depressing it is to work on a project that you know is going to fail? That's life. I love Japan, I love the trains, I love the politeness and I love the people. However, given a level playing field (IE: No banks artificially propping up a company to avoid declaring losses on their own records), it wouldn't take much to break the back of a lot of local companies. (As much as I hate admitting it, but I can't work effectively after 8 or 9 hours - and the Japanese don't have superior body operating systems)