Here is a pretty interesting article on living and working in Japan. The article is specifically talking about the gaming industry, however a lot of the points made can easily be related to the Japanese working system in general.



Page 1 details some general facts about the Japanese working system, and some of the ways a Westerner might find him or herself in Japan, with page 2 detailing some of the differences between the working ethics.

I particularly like this part about working hours, and how Japanese workers are not necessarily 'working long hours', more that they are just hanging around because its not generally accepted to leave the office before your direct supervisor. I saw a LOT of this over the last 4 years, even in the school systems, and it always got to me. Foreigners are generally expected to fit in with these working hours too, but its something I decided early on not to become a part of, regardless of the consequences. The trick is to do it over time gradually, and make sure you get your work done on time. Then there 'should' be no problem. One of the authors of this article agrees with me

according to proper Japanese etiquette, nobody leaves until the boss and no individual leaves before his or her immediate supervisor. Regardless of whether a single individual has any work left to do. This is compounded by “slacking” during the day according to Tavares. “Japanese don’t ‘work’ long hours,” he said. “They just stay at work for long hours...

The article gets a bit more game focused on pages 3 and 4, but has some good general points on page 5 with a great summary of the UK, US and JAPAN working environments:

“The UK is a pub culture - people like to doss and arse about a lot, but they are very good and very skilled at their jobs - when they do them.”

“The US is a corporate culture, everyone is a cog in the machine, even in a smaller company, so there is far less responsibility towards the company and its finances and people assume that they should have the best wage, best equipment, best software, best everything, even if they don't use them. That said, they have great responsibility to the work itself and there are some extremely clever and diligent people there. Corporate politics, gossip and rivalries can get a bit too much.”

“The Japanese games development culture is still slightly "salaryman", everyone kind of avoids responsibility by remaining quiet but they persevere by themselves until they get the product done. Unfortunately, this lack of sharing is hurting the technical development of the games industry here in Japan. The Japanese never give up until all the details are in place and they try and leave nothing haphazard or rough-edged, or oozappa (in Japanese).”