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Comment by evidencetamper | Hacker News Reader

This, plus yearly mandated healthchecks with huge pressure and shame on excessive weight.

Are you speaking from experience? Because this sounds like the typical sensationalization of all things Japanese which permeates even this website. Compared to western culture, people in Japan may be more forward about commenting on your weight (as is also common in some other East Asian cultures), but I wouldn't call it "huge pressure and shame".

As to the health exam, you may get some consultation and recommendations if your measurements show you are overweight, but it doesn't turn into some draconian process shaming you into losing the weight. I'm Japanese and never heard about such thing.

If you never heard about the weight maintenance company wide competitions (let's fitness!), the labor doctor telling you that it might be difficult for you to handle stressful management work with high blood pressure, the kids saying that they were laughed at because their dad is fat...

You're blessed.

I can't tell if you are speaking from experience or not. I tried googling about this company wide competition and cant find any hits about this, searched "lets fitness" in english and Japanese, cant find anything.

High blood pressure is a medical condition, and you are telling me that a suggestion from the doctor regarding stress levels at work is bad?

And kids, cmon. Kids will make fun of anything. I did some schooling in the US and I was made fun of purely for being of a particular race.

Oh, I see. You're not actually Japanese.

applause fantastic conclusion

None of these are even remotely unique or attributable to Japan. You can find them anywhere in the developed world.

Is that true?

I live in Japan and maybe my company is different, because we don't get that pressure and shame. My health check reports show a warning sign in the weight/BMI area, and that's it. Plenty of chubby and overweight people in my office too, and nobody shames them.

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