I know this is 5 years later :’) but this reminded me of a bizarre experience in Tokyo. It’s commonly considered rude and bad to eat on the street , especially while walking. I got a soft serve ice cream which I wrongly assumed must surely be an exception. I was stood outside a store called Animate when I noticed behind me a giant poster of very graphic pornography/genitalia – the sort of thing that would cause outrage and uproar on Fox News in the USA. I the also notice I am getting filthy looks for eating my ice cream and dripping it on the pavement. I just took in the bizarreness of people giving me shady looks for the horror of my lapse in etiquette, but quite oblivious to the extreme hard core essentially CSA material publicly displayed next to/behind me. The ice cream is the problem here of course….

I think possibly there are different ideas about what ‘inefficiency’ means. I am from Britain (Scotland specifically) but I spend 2/3 months a year in Japan, and have spent a lot of work time based in Shinjuku. Japan is my favourite Country and I really didn’t find it that hard to adapt to business and social culture because it actually fits quite well with the business culture in London.

There is no doubting at all that Japan is one of (if not *the* most in some cases) economically developed/successful country with a very strong economy backed up by very high levels of professional talent/hi-technology / very hard working people. Britain used to be like this as well before about 2016. However, one negative thing about Britain is its obsession with what we call ‘Presenteeism’. Companies and institutions value people being in their place of work, for long periods of time for the sake of it, and it is just assumed that this must be a good thing, regardless of outcome. A study also showed that while British people worked the longest hours in Europe, they got far less done during that time compared to employees in Germany who work, say, only 6 hours a day – and those 6 hours are put to better use than making people spend 12 hours doing less. We are the least productive people per hour spent, are more exhausted and tired, and that is inefficient/creates inefficiency.

I think Japan is very similar. Like the UK, Japanese companies can be obsessed with employees spending long time periods at work ‘for the sake of it’. I remember in my office being told – ‘don’t take breaks as it will make you look lazy. if you want to have a break just pick up a clipboard and walk around the office so it looks like you aren’t taking a break’. Many people would do this for 30, 40 , 50 minutes. This is also typical in London. Given that those hours are lost anyway, why not just have the employees work for 8 hours, with proper breaks/flexibility which increases happiness/efficiency and productivity?

In continental Europe it is more widely recognised that being flexible, allowing people to work at home, or letting employees have much more freedom as to how they do their job *provided they produce a good outcome*. If you tried suggesting this to London big corporates or any institution they would dismiss this as laziness, people trying to get out of working hard, not being a ‘team player’ and even that it’s offensive to your colleagues who still work on site for 12 hours, if you are getting to work from home or flexibly. I think there would be the same reaction from many Japanese companies and institutions!

That’s usually the sort of thing I see discussed where Japan is described as inefficient.

I find Japan and Britain to be actually very similar – to me much more similar than the UK and USA. We are also very indirect, generally go out of our way to avoid conflict and not offend people (to hilarious levels), don’t like people making a fuss, defer to older people for the sake of it, etc etc I could go on.

Expecting women to be housewives just because they gives them a modicum of power is sexist and outdated. However you are right that this poster completely misunderstood the weird way Japanese can use eggo and mistranslated Girl Power in their initial article.

Otaku culture and also places like harajuku(which have almost nothing to do with otaku culture) are things that Japanese seek after university to escape the “work at the same company out of university until you die and get married before 30” societal/often parental expectation. Even (somewhat) celebrated novelist Haruki Murakami had his beginningins in his and his wife’s co-owned jazz bar/restaurant there. Actually I’m not sure if it was harujuku, I can’t remember, but it had a strong counterculture vibe.

Countercultures are flawed but they are always, even in the case of smelly virgin(both male and femcels, yes girls can smell really fucking bad too bigot)) otaku, a response to the society that spawned them. Consider it a band-aid solution but you’re exaggerating the flaws it might have. You should make an anime because hideaki anno did that and people still pretend Evangelion was good because they posthumously want to justify being scammed out of 26 episodes of their free time.

Anyways your article is just being a 2000s era Bushite Republican about a culture you only almost fully understood, just replace anime with drugs and you could become a sexually and physically violent and racist DEA agent and make mad stacks by stealing from the evidence locker instead of writing boring articles that feel like they were written by a 13 year old girl on tumblr who visited japan for the first time in 2005. Idiot. Moron.

Hi, I’m Japanese.
I’ve read your article and I actually agree with most of the parts.
I assume that people from other countries would find it difficult to adopt this culture and society.
But I would like to point out one thing that makes me upset.
Japan is in fact known for its gross inefficiency??
Are you serious about it?
I have been living in multiple countries for the last 10 years including North America.
But there is no way that Japan is known for gross inefficiency and I feel offended and I don’t know why you thought that way.
We work a lot, which doesn’t mean we are inefficient. We just have a lot of workloads and we take care of customers at the very last minute and sometimes It might lead to overtime. That’s all.
I’m really shocked by what you wrote here and pls never use Japan to make money with a video and a blog or whatever.

Thank you.

Ah! Another miserable Wokester, virtue-signaling by bashing their home culture. If the UK is so “racist”, why has it accepted so many immigrants per capita in comparison with Japan? Or does examining those metrics not help your toxic narrative?

Japan encourages workers to “clock out” before they work overtime. So a lot of the work hours of Japanese aren’t being counted. Also Women may work fewer hours which makes Men’s longer hours seem shorter.

Well not all Thai think alike, a Thai guy I met in Twitcast said that the Japanese are extremely racist against Thai people, however, this guy had amazing Japanese I have to say.