I lived in a Tokyo coworking space
curbed.com
curbed.com
I think "many of us" don't know any small business owners.
>it didn’t take long before I gave up on professionalism and slipped into oversharing the messier parts of life that I usually don’t put on display for coworkers—being hungover, braless, binge-watching Terrace House.
This sort of "oversharing" is normal in pretty much any blue collar industry that provides housing for workers.
http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2012/09/06/midoriso-collaborativ...
I'm pretty sure from the details in the story that she was at the Nagatacho GRID one.
- if you have the fonts, in the original: 緑荘
The Japanese generally don't view real estate as a speculative investment so capital gains are quite low.
This is so important to me. Working from home sounds luxurious, but when I tried it it felt more like living at work. You need to be able to draw a hard line between the times and spaces where you work, and the ones where your time is your own.
Tell your distant great grandfather, you know the small farmer in rural europe in the 1700s, that the cows just escaped the pen and see if he says "But its saturday evening, I'm off the clock".
As for the farm worker that is hired, you can be sure they don't bring the cows home with them.
He probably would if they were someone else's cows.
I think of it that way because work and life aren't two separate things—work exists within life—and neither do they balance equally. Work always demands a greater chunk of your time, whether it warrants it or not. If such a boundary is crossed and it is one that you find important, then you might recognise that much sooner than if you're thinking about balance, because you can start getting into specifics and where exactly you do draw the line instead of attempting to rationalise something you might not like.
At that point, it's not just work asking for longer hours, or flexibility on weekends; it's also stuff like your colleagues sending you messages and emails at 11pm or 2am, eating lunch at your desk, not taking holidays, hackathons (if those even happen any more!), being expected to be on call, leaving the office at 7pm instead of 5.30pm as the contract states, etc.
And after that, if you find work to becoming ever more intrusive, then the boundary system gives you enough info to recognise that this isn't really a 'work' problem, it's the same kind of shit you get in any unhealthy relationship and your working relationships are no exception.
However, others (and I put myself in this category) are pretty good at setting informal limits while being flexible about it. I tend to work 9-5ish at home but I'll run a daytime errand if I need to and spend some time in the evening if it makes sense.
Personally, I cannot handle Japan's stringent work culture on an emotional level. To paraphrase George Goebbels, I feel that Japan is a tuxedo and I'm a brown pair of shoes. However, I do respect the fact that in small ways, like inemuri (sleeping during work), Japan treats their employees like humans, rather than resources. They may suck in other areas, and do, but in this regard I think they have the right attitude.
Preferring that your employees be exhausted and asleep at work, rather than having a work-life balance, is treating your employees like humans?
At least they realize the employees are still human.
Japans work culture is completely toxic and dysfunctional. I have one rule that I stick to these days: "Never work in, with or for Japan."
extremely work lunch break with drinking and not much work after lunch, not that bad for someone young and single, in other offices they even encouraged people to sleep on mats under their desks, at least they can work longer hours and start earlier than hours
though after buying computer and renting better room with better internet i stopped doing it, can't say it would change much about my work/life balance