Soheki comments

Most of the Japanese won't leave early. People were contracted at my organisation to 5.30pm but every night I would walk past the office at 7pm and sometimes 9pm and there would still be people working away in there.

People admire the Japananese dedication to their work, but if you saw how much they procrastinate and how inefficiently they use their time, perhaps people would change their views. The rest of the world goes home when they are contracted to, and the world keeps spinning. It is annoying that the Japanese can't do the same and use it to belittle or frown upon people who leave on time or earlier (if they have finished their work, both of which I came up against).

Not only is it backward from an employers point of view (i.e you worked a retail unit and had workers who stayed three hours of unpaid overtime but only made five sandwiches for the entire day where as the workers who left on time made twenty and more efficiently used their time.. which would you keep or fire?), but it is also bad for employee morale.

This isn't true for all Japanese people of course, there are very hardworking Japanese people who know about the importance of being efficient whilst maintaining a healthy work schedule, but I have not myself witnessed it.

I think the stay late mentality might hail back to rural farming jobs, where there was ALWAYS work that could be done or needed doing, therefore you worked until you lost the light of day. But that is just me speculating.

There is also the matter of Japanese people who will stay at their offices late on purpose to avoid their families. I won't go into this too much for fear of upsetting people (besides it happens in the West too!) but not half as frequently as the Japanese sons who don't want to return home to their parents houses (in the case of the younger generation) and husbands who don't want to go home to their wives and children (not true of all Japanese men!). I did not witness too many married women who stayed late, because of their family obligations. However it appeared that single women stayed late to 'match' or 'out-do' their male co-workers. Either that or they just didn't want to go home to their parents constantly questioning them as to why the haven't got married and had babies yet.

(Please note this piece contained sweeping generalisations and, my point of view).