Japan to give up on daylight saving time for 2020 Olympics: report

Public opinion? When has that ever swayed them when they want to do something? Pathetic excuse, to put the responsibility for the decision on someone else.

Screw it.... I'm gonna switch my clocks by 2 hours starting June 1st, next year and turn them back on August 31st. I've just got to remember that everything will open about 2 hours later than normal.

Here is one for the public! (sarcasm) Seriously, if public opinion swayed the government here to do ANYTHING, we'd have a new PM by now.....(more sarcasm)

Hardly surprising.

Theyre going to be in deep trouble and have a lot of countries to answer to when athletes suffer from heat stroke

 citing the time and effort to adjust computer systems as well as disruptions to public life.

Exactly how long does it take to change a clock on a computer? 30 seconds? I cannot understand these ‘disruptions to daily life’ they keep harping on about either. Half of the modern world uses daylight saving and have done for decades. Perhaps Japan is not the ‘modern’ country they pretend to be.

Wise decision. The problems of changing PC systems, disrupting public, train timetables, working scedule and farms, etc, is not worth just for 2 weeks of Olympic games.

Nice to see they can abandon a stupid idea so quickly. Hope after all.

Half of the modern world uses daylight saving and have done for decades. Perhaps Japan is not the ‘modern’ country they pretend to be.

This is from the "whatever we do in my country is modern and advanced, because we do it." It has nothing to do with modernity, It's simply a choice.

Vince BlackToday  07:24 am JST Hardly surprising. Theyre going to be in deep trouble and have a lot of countries to answer to when athletes suffer from heat stroke

Just how would adopting DST affect this? Unless they start events at 6am, you're not going to beat the heat and humidity of July and August. These games should be the beginning of October.

In any case, Tokyo is so far south that adopting DST wouldn't give central and western Japan all that much additional daylight. Your really need to be about 50-degrees North Latitude before the effect becomes all that pronounced.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-daylight-saving-time-20180705-story.html#

Ganbare Japan!Today  07:39 am JST Wise decision. The problems of changing PC systems, disrupting public, train timetables, working scedule and farms, etc, is not worth just for 2 weeks of Olympic games.

None of things you cite would be affected in the least by adopting DST. The majority of the world uses DST and seems to function just fine. The stupidity of the proposal is adopting it for just two weeks. Adopt it as the new standard or don't.

public opinion

you mean company opinion. Good. No reason to change for a few weeks to a stupid timing system the rest of the world would be better off losing as well

Because the Japanese people, from kindergarten to university, are trained to do activities under the heat of the sun. The gaman spirit takes over them. So, if they can, why can't the foreign athletes can't?

I wonder, what is the skin cancer rate here.

Daylight saving time in Japan? Because of 2020 Olympics? This is so stupid from beginning. Wonder who said that first? Daylight saving seems very irrelevant from games. Better do marathon during all night.

It's absurd sun is up at 4.30, 6 hours latter work starts. Any change no matter how beneficial is shunned because it's a change. Japanese don't/ can't cope with change. Giving IT as an excuse is bizarre, as is the dwindling Farming sector it's not as if the crops are confused about the time, and the animals have watches. All the major stock exchanges cope without a blip. Its simply a change that Japan is not mentally able to fathom.

Not that I care about DST either way but where is the evidence that public opinion is against it? I see that the Asahi reported it but where did they gather such data?

"Three-quarters of Japanese firms oppose the proposal" - Are the board of directors of corporations now considered to be valid providers of public opinion? I must be getting my sectors mixed up again.

Just change time zones to an hour earlier.

For heat during the Olympics, I suspect the real risk is to spectators in the stands in mid-afternoon, possibly for events like rowing where there is heat and UV reflected back off the water.

Wise decision. The problems of changing PC systems, disrupting public, train timetables, working scedule and farms, etc, is not worth just for 2 weeks of Olympic games.

Is it so disruptive? My home country does it with minimum hassle. Your home country, Australia, manages it despite the fact some of the states don’t observe it.

Everyone nearly everyone I see has a really expensive watch, apparently it's just too hard to find out how to change the time without going to a store. Now that is inconvenient. And culturally not an option. Better to suffer than....join the rest of the world!

I don't get it... Can someone explain this to me?

How can changing the time one way or the other affect the weather when it is  STIFLINGLY HOT 24 HOURS A DAY in summer!?

Spidey - It's not going to affect the weather, but it will won't get dark for another hour, and it will get light an hour earlier.

it will won't get dark for another hour, and it will get light an hour earlier.

That doesn't sound right. Putting the clocks forward or backward means sunrise and sunset are both moved by one hour, in the same direction.

Summertime means it gets light later and dark later.

Not sure of the public opinion, but many IT systems are legacy and any time changes will have to be planned, changes made (example stop the systems and change time, some programs may run twice which are dependent on computer clock) and tested . Not to mention cost of the planning, change, test and then announce to their customers about the possible impact (imagine old japanese customers not aware of this time jump, will expect their ATM deposit time to be different). Customer Regulations are stricter in Japan, for that matter the whole Japanese culture is based on services given and services received concept!

So the IT tantou or Bucho would be gladly saying "Taihen" and "Mendokusai" and Shacho would say No to KEIDANREN (Japan Business Federation) .

Schedule Olympic events whenever the best time for the event is. There is no reason to change the entire nation's clock.

The original arguments for introducing Daylight Savings in other countries proved hollow. There aren't grand electricity savings. There's not any boost to commerce. What happens instead is that everyone gets their Circadian cycles disrupted twice a year, which causes documented negative health effects and lower work productivity. Daylight Savings is a stupid relic of the early 20th century that now has considerable science weighing against it. No sensible government today should remotely consider adopting Daylight Savings.

Sadly, "sensible" and "government" don't generally go together.

The original arguments for introducing Daylight Savings in other countries proved hollow.

Not the lifestyle ones. I grew up with DST and love it, and it is one of the biggest things I miss about my homeland, where DST is really popular. All my compatriots here in Japan agree.

We find the darkness in the early summer evenings depressing. We prefer natural light over artificial light and would enjoy going out for a walk or playing tennis or golf after dinner, like we used to be able to do.

Japan is absolutely moronic and defies all logic when it comes to daylight savings' time and not adopting it. It would be not only beneficial during the Olympics, but in general. People complain about the sun rising at 4:00 in summer and disrupting sleep, as well as wasting power in general, and this would to a certain extent alleviate those problems, among a myriad of others. What's in the way, misplaced pride and insecurity, with many stating, "We Don't need this Western concept!". Countries in Europe are opting out of it when it makes sense to do so, and if it made sense for Japan not do adopt it I would agree with them not doing so, but the reasons for not doing so have ZERO to do with sense, and are, as stated above, as well as plain old stupidity. TIJ.

So, now I guess we're back to just praying the trend of summers getting hotter will skip 2020, and maybe hope robots will come save us or Something, and we know full well that when athlètes pass out and die, as well as spectators (probably in droves), and the Japanese 2020 Olympics go down as an example of what NEVER to repeat, and the bumbling and stupidity that led to it, they'll say first, "How could we have known?" then, "We Don't need international approval or international sports events!" to saying, "You're just bashing Japan" and playing victim, to Simply ignoring it altogether. It can be prevented, but Japan loves to step knowingly towards and eventually over the edge of a cliff with a sigh and a shouganai.

Much modern devices nowadays are automatically synced with an outside time clock standard

That includes computers, smartphones, clocks, expensive watches, smart TVs, cars, etc.

Essentially, if it can receive an outside signal (wired or wireless), it can be synced

What happens instead is that everyone gets their Circadian cycles disrupted twice a year, which causes documented negative health effects and lower work productivity.

For a couple of days, but after that, it's no longer a concern

It's like jet lag - that affects your Circadian rhythm too, but just a couple days, and then you go back to normal. You don't see people still affected by jet lag for days and days. That's what allows people to constantly travel and still be OK

Heck, pro sports players can travel across time zones several times in a matter of days and yet still perform on the court like a champ. Ya just have to know how to mitigate it - it's not untreatable; ya can do something about it