Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

We as Christians should share love and respect to Deity, but we are not doing even 1 % of what we are suppose to do.

Aso, I agree with you. Without hard work Japanese people would not progress and would not make a wonderful performance in education and business.

Don’t confuse MS Project with project management.

Don’t confuse office workers with productivity statistics. They are in it for the salary and the beer. There is no monetary incentive for productivity so the end result is a lot of people that like playing politics.

Just ask the j guy that invented blue light LEDs.

OK onto bashing PM Asssole.
I think the German concentration camps had similar slogans written on the prisons entrances.

A lot of work activity I’ve seen here is actually a kind of social ceremony and that activity often becomes confused with accomplishment. My wife gets frustrated at the dara dara (dawdling pace) and zatsuyo (meaningless ‘busy’ work) at her workplace. And I’ve learned that focusing hard and packing a lot of intensive, productive work into 8 hours and heading home doesn’t win you as many workplace laurels as staying late in the office with your light on, showing your face, but actually achieving very little. Taking 20 working hours to do something you could actually do in 8 gets you the coveted “ganbatte iru” tag.

As a result of this, an unfortunate number of Japanese workers seem to be overly stressed or too exhausted to take care of their health (which could be regarded as a type of hard work), pursue outside interests (which take effort and concentration), or be as active with their families as they’d like (another kind of hard work).

I worked for one of the top Japanese mobile phone makers a few years ago. People worked from around 10 – 10.30 until 22 – 23 mostly every day. (although they had a Wednesday each month where everyone HAD to leave no later than 18.30).

Basically people just did nothing until some time in the afternoon. All meetings was always scheduled for around 17 and later.

I don’t understand how they fail to see the engineers would be more efficient if they could spend more time out side of work…

God punished Adam after the Fall by making work difficult and unpleasant. “You disobeyed me, so now you have to leave the Garden where the work is light and fulfilling and go out into the desert where life, basically, sucks.”

Does this Aso guy not read his Bible?

From what I have heard from Western friends (ie not n Japan) that is pretty much SOP over there as well, with the possible exception of deciding what to eat. Meetings to discuss the contents of meetings…. However you are certainly correct about Japanese office work – it’s all about showing up.

http://stats.oecd.org/WBOS/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LEVEL

Japan works a lot of hours, not the most. The average Japanese person works only 80 more hours per year than their American counterpart. But that’s not what’s important.

Look at the GDP per hour worked (in US dollars):

Japan: 37.3 (Hours worked: 1785)
OECD average: 40.3 (Hours worked: 1744)
EU: 41.8 (Hours worked: 1655)
Canada: 42.6 (Hours worked: 1736)
Australia: 43.7 (Hours worked: 1730)
US: 52.4 (Hours worked: 1705)

So yes, Japanese may stay in the office longer than their Old-Testament-Based-Social-Counterparts, but that doesn’t mean that they’re actually getting anything done.

Besides, if you’ve ever worked for a Japanese company, you already know all about “Japanese productivity” – It’s sitting in a 3 hour meeting for 15-minutes-worth of information that everyone has already read in the company bulletin, and then taking 30 minutes to decide what to eat for the remaining 20 minutes of the lunch break.

“Will the Prime Minister visit Yasukuni Shrine this year?”
but
“How many times will he visit Yasukuni Shrine this year?”

Yet another “Japan is better than everywhere else, and Japanese people are the master race.” retarded racist prick.

Has he ever held a real job? Does he do his own laundry? Ever used a hammer? Not gotten his full share of holidays? Only managing to go out drinking 4 nights a week now?