Japan's national park facilities upgraded with 'workation' in mind

So does this half day work/half day vacation count as a full vacation day?

likely it does.

It sounds like Koizumi billed the government (or his ministry) for his vacation by claiming to do a little work while he was there. I hope the opposition party asks for information about this in the next Diet session.

Only Japan could cone up with a word like, workation. Work is work and vacation is vacation. They are not one in the same. People take a vacation to get away from work, not to take it with them.

The whole point of a holiday/vacation is to have a complete break from work so you return refreshed to the coalface. Jaded and exhausted people are inefficient and a drag on productivity, so it is in the employers interest that they have a complete break. This becomes even more pertinent now the home/workplace decide has become less defined so there will be less psychological break and relaxation from the stresses of work that home previously provided.

A workation is a sure way to create psychological problems in your workforce.

Edit, “home/workplace divide”

Japan was touting work-life balance a few years ago.

But we know that was said just to make the ones in charge to make themselves feel good.

Dumb keeps getting dumber sadly!!!

That said many do keep up on email etc while trying to MOSTLY enjoy a holiday. I have done this here in Japan for over 20years without any help from the daft govt! By all means get better wifi in place but cut this workation BS NOW!!!

"It is important to trust employees rather than worrying about whether they are really working," a company official told Koizumi when asked about the difficulties and keys to success for implementing workation at each company.

If you judge workers on output, not on hours on a time card or seniority, it doesn't matter where or how they do the work. It is not a issue of "trust".

Just move to these beautiful places, for Pete's sake. Then take a REAL vacation.

Only Japan could cone up with a word like, workation.

Japan did not come up with "workation"

Putting aside the stupid comments from some respondents, this seems to me like an interesting idea coming out of Japan.

I'm going to explore whether we have any similar schemes in England and if not - recommend this initiative.

I only wish I could come back and use that scheme at Chuzenjiko - or even better - one at Towadako - what a knock- out place that is! I hope Aomori prefecture is exploring these initiatives.

Yeah, seems like most commenters are assuming this means you'll have to work on your vacation days.

I've been lucky enough while working in Japan to be given permission to do 'workations' a couple of times when I needed to be in the UK for 2 weeks+ and didn't want to use up all my PTO to do so. It was pretty damn good being able to work early morning/afternoon and then having my evenings free to do whatever.

Imagine this 'workation' idea applied to the ski season. You could travel up one weekend, stay through to the next weekend, do some skiing or go to an onsen or whatever every single day and still not make a dent in your PTO. It's clearly advantageous for the worker, not some nefarious scheme to make people work harder.

Aomori does indeed have a workation staton some place. The idea is dad (of course, mom never needs to work full-time) works in the AM and enjoys nature with the family in the PM. I doubt that ever happens as dad’s work will probably schedule Zoom meetings in the PM and/or dad will be ‘inspired’ to continue working into the afternoon. Maybe even into the night.

If you have the discipline to stop work, Aomori would be a great place for a vacation.

Give the guy a break. Maybe he's just trying to make workation sexy.

just make up a word using Japanese, it's perfectly capable of making new words