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Comment by kristianc | Hacker News Reader

My impression of working in Japan around five years ago was that it felt like an economy medicated on caffeine.

Work goes on from 8am - 9pm, after which many are expected to go out and socialize with their colleagues (karaoke etc) and get drunk until 3am. Rinse and repeat, most days of the week. It wasn't at all unusual to see rows of salarymen asleep on the subway every morning.

Japan's most popular drink is a brand of canned coffee which is on sale everywhere and in the vending machines that line the streets. Coca Cola's brand of this coffee accounts for an outsize proportion of their global profits (something like 12%, only sold in Japan).

All of this seems to be totally okay and accepted despite the obvious impact on productivity of regularly going for long periods without sleep. This is the offices of Dentsu, Japan's largest media agency, at night: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX6--sQtsA

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> Japan's most popular drink is a brand of canned coffee which is on sale everywhere and in the vending machines that line the streets. Coca Cola's brand of this coffee accounts for an outsize proportion of their global profits (something like 12%, only sold in Japan).

Yet another strange Japan-related fact. That is an insane amount of coffee.

For anyone curious, the Coca Cola beverage is called "Georgia": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(coffee).

It's interesting that canned coffee is very popular in Asia (or that's my experience from SE Asia, Nestle seems to be the most popular there), but not in the western world.

It's actually quite good. I used to look sideways at people who drink iced coffee in general, but now I've embraced the dark side :P

Isn't it? I wouldn't say it's uncommon in Europe.

I've never seen canned coffee in Poland, Czech Republic, Greece or England, but I can't speak for other countries.

Canned and cartoned(!) coffee is all over the place now in the UK. Starbucks make a lot of it, and there seems to be quite a few smaller brands popping up.

It's all full of sugar though, more like slightly coffee flavoured milkshakes. Combination of the sugar and caffeine really works though...

Yep, it has about 20 different SKUs, from Emerald Mountain Blend (the common, all Garden classic version) to Georgia Black to Georgia Max Coffee (basically an iced Caramel Machiatto). The insane profitability is largely due to the distribution model - Coke just has to strike a deal with the vending machine bottlers and it can get 200m units to market quickly. Recently the market share has been eroded by the likes of Kirin and Suntory, who run their own competing brands. I know this as Georgis is one of the accounts I worked on.

> after which many are expected to go out and socialize with their colleagues (karaoke etc) and get drunk until 3am.

Is it socially acceptable not to do so? Or is there high pressure from peers or superiors to do it?

When do people spend time with their families there? If they even have families...

There's an expectation that you'd participate at least to some extent. There will be smaller karaoke / drinking type parties after work, and a larger 'nomikai' meal at a large restaurant which is used to celebrate a major milestone say every month or quarter.

You would probably be expected to participate in the larger one, whereas particpating in less of the smaller ones would become adverse career wise over time. Drinking is theoretically optional.

Typically family time seemed to be at weekends, and heavily focused on getting out and about into the countryside etc. The apartments are so small that it wouldn't really be feasible or desirable to hang out at home much.

So, seems like Japan is a totally unproductive country?

I mean, they work all this time, which seems like twice what an average country would do, and they're still doing ho-hum in most markets, are non-existent in most areas of modern tech, and have a huge deficit.

If it weren't for their cars and some consumer electronics stuff (that has seen its peak in the late 80s - early 90s) they'd be done.

It's not massively productive, and the amount of time spent at work doesn't really reflect the amount of work done. After about 5, the beers will come out.

The creative output isn't great either. Agencies like Dentsu are the size they are because of relationships, and that there will be someone there to answer the phone any time of the day or night, rather than out of any creative brilliance.

Dentsu are an example of a big Japanese company that has recently started to work with Western companies to in effect, outsource the innovation and creative ideas bit.

Your analysis is correct - once Japan lost its supply chain supremacy they were never likely to be able to win back the advantage by producing higher quality goods and services.

>Your analysis is correct - once Japan lost its supply chain supremacy they were never likely to be able to win back the advantage by producing higher quality goods and services.

Would you say the Chinese are somewhat different in this regard?

I have a feeling they can have more knack for this going forward.

The Chinese have the Shanzai model, which almost embraces the 'copycat' phenomenon to drive innovation. It's a very very open culture where everyone publishes their bill of materials and design specs, and any other company can use them. No patents.

> http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/media/file/Shan_Zhai_AChinese...

Seems like an argument against the idea that patents encourage innovation.

Working for a Shanzhai company, in financial technology no less, with personal origins far from this, I agree somewhat. It is an open culture, but built with tape and plasterboard.

Innovation is easy when iterating, but such organisational culture has little push for true 'innovation'. 'Shanzhai' as a term was considered fun 5 years ago, but today is taken as an insult when such companies are CMMI5 approved. 'Innovation' is a new buzz word adopted in China over the past 2 years replacing shanzhai.

The very very open culture also results in very very quick quick releases of employees that don't maintain sufficient updates and success stories to company owners, roughly on a 2-week basis, and major breakthrough every quarter. That's not a culture for innovation, but iterating someone else's idea.

China seems to be heading to a fairly low per capita economy with serious long term issues. They have lots of land and a large population so they can project political power, but massive corruption at every level has huge negative implications. As does the looming political unrest.

IDK, there are companies you have never heard of that have $6 bilion in yearly revenue:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YKK_Group

Definitely not making cars nor consumer electronics.

Everybody knows YKK, its in their pants.

I learned about it from an article here a few weeks back. I don't find that weird - not many people notice the brand of zippers on their pants.

Economically they are actually doing fairly well adjusted for natural resources and demographics. Arguably they could improve things through immigration, but looking at population density shrinking there population long term is probably a good thing.

PS: Don't forget GDP is a somewhat meaningless number in peacetime, it's per capita GDP that people notice. Their real issue is an unstistanable public debt.

The country has no natural resources to export, and had to start from scratch in 1945, so they're not doing that awful. They're not the be-all end-all, but it's still impressive what they've accomplished. The biggest problem they're facing is demographics: very few babies, and very little immigration.

A good friend of mine owns a corporation in Japan. He'd worked in the US for a decade or so before going home to start his own business, so he was in a pretty good position to compare the work cultures.

He said in Japan expectation #1 is you're at work for many hours. You show up before your boss arrives and you go home after he leaves, unless you're out drinking with him. Which is mostly mandatory - "My wife is sick" is an acceptable excuse. "I'm tired" is not. In the big companies the people from your college class at that company all get promoted as a group, so there's a whole lot of pressure from your college friends not to do (or not do) anything that will delay their own advancement.

But when you're at work you're not expected to look for things to do. Your boss will tell you when he needs you to do something. If he doesn't come by and give you a task it's perfectly reasonable to sit at your desk and do nothing. As an employer or manager you are not supposed to run your people ragged, either. My friend spent most of every morning going around to each employee and making sure they had something to do, but not so much it would reflect badly on him as an employer.

In the end he figured Americans and Japanese people get about the same amount of work done every day. The social dynamics are totally different, though. In Japan your work is like a second family.

There's also a sort of macho culture there, where as a salaryman you work incredibly long hours and deal with crazy commutes without complaining. And if you do complain you sort of lose social points.

As I understand it, there is a strong impetus to look busy, regardless of how much you get done.

In many offices, the majority of the employees start at about 10 am or even later. Also, most people people prefer to go home using public transportation, which stops relatively early (in most places, between midnight and 1:00 am). Extroverts like to socialize, introverts less so. Personally, I fall into the latter camp, but I usually find it to be invigorating and educational when I do "participate." Those with families often "bow out" (no pun intended), although I can see that with some groups, there might be peer pressure. If one has a long commute, that can be a perfect excuse to not participate or to leave early.

I wonder if one can even make it in Japan if they don't drink.

That's why they invented non-alcoholic beer.

No, it's fine if you just drink tea non-alcoholic beer. You just have to act the part. At least at my wife's company it's fine (it may help she has the excuse of having to drive)

My experience (a few periods in the late 90s to mid 2000s) was high pressure for locals working for Japanese firms, less so for foreigners or locals working for foreign firms. The informal drinking (where junior workers can "say anything" to the boss and blame it on the alcohol) was a counter-balance to the formality of the work, where juniors would never contradict their seniors. For the formality to work, you need and outlet. It's the way the culture balances formality and relationships. Bosses are expected to be available to hear from their employees after hours. If they aren't, they won't be respected, or know what's really going on.

In some cases the family relationships have a strict division of labor: Dad works and Mom raises the family. Two very distinct lives. In more traditional companies and families it can look bad to come home from work by 6. (Are you no longer important?) In other cases the forced socializing eases up somewhat over the years, or the parents find work in smaller or foreign companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giri_%28Japanese%29

May be worth a look.

And yet they are very anti-drug right? You'd think they'd somehow allow the use of amphetamines or Ritalin. Much more effective than caffeine.

Oh, amphetamines were huge in Japan for a long time, especially during wwii and the postwar period of recovery, and while the government cracked down on drugs in a major way after the fifties, meth is still probably the top drug in Japan.

But this cannot be true for all industries, can it? I mean, there are industries where Japanese products are the leaders in terms of quality and reliability. I don't believe those are primarily staffed with workers who sleep that little.

For a country that prizes excellence, you'd think they'd be more focused on actually achieving it, and not just appearing to achieve it.

It's still a country made up of humans. Humans are not so different there than they are here (where ever here may be).

That's a very fair point.

> an economy medicated on caffeine.

Coffee makes the world go around.

2nd largest commodity in the world, IIRC.

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