It’s not common to have separate units here though. Much easier to setup a wash/dry cycle timer.

Keep in mind this is a country where new graduate salaries have been unchanging for the past 30 years. Even small rates of inflation is relatively devastating to certain groups.

Imagine a banking app not allowing onboarding outside 8:30-18:30 Mon-Fri or a municipal site just saying come back at 8am.

The e-Tax system and various other government services still have these as well, mostly as daily maintenance windows. Some services use it to run data clean-up, consolidation, backup, etc. tasks so it’s not without reason.

Some of their collaborations also work out really well — especially the desserts with Pierre Hermé.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/06/24/business/seven-...

The US contracts might be more relaxed or the holding company might not have enough control due to the sheer size of the US market. In Japan, most stores get deliveries more than twice a day, have inspectors show up unannounced, need to make daily reports in some cases, etc. Not much room for leeway.

Not many software promises to fend off attackers, asks for an email address before download, and creates a bunch of processes using a closed source dll the existence of which can easily be checked.

Then again, not many malware targeting consumers at random check for security software. You are more likely to see a malware stop working if you fake the amount of ram and cpu and your network driver vendor than if you have CrowdStrike, etc. running.

Japanese people also don't like talking about wages and not everyone compares what they are making to the dollar. I have heard plenty of colleagues, friends, and family complain. It's more about how the number of diapers in a bag has decreased steadily from 72 to 56 than boy my life is getting ruined by weak yen.

The more prevalent complaints are from fellow mortgage borrowers. Variable rates in Japan have been steady for nearly 30 years, meaning a substantial number of borrowers are watching the central bank's moves like a hawk and are terrified of even any talks of rate increases.

TLDR: We are just not loud complainers (and frankly, if any Japanese person you know is hopefully very lucky, they might be earning just enough to not notice it all)

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m the only one.

Worst are the people who both don’t like the “I need you to …” task giving and do absolutely nothing when left alone or only given a goal and a direction. How do you deal with it if you are working on an industry where performance adjustments and feedback can take years and you can coast without doing anything four more than a couple of years?

SoftBank is originally one of the big 3 telecom providers in Japan. We do joke around here about our phone bills increasing anytime Masayoshi Son makes a bad investment.

Some people, including myself unfortunately, are uncomfortable with unread messages. The biggest problem is, you’ll read the message, but not respond right away to avoid creating the impression “keep messaging me at this hour”. Then, when the appropriate time to answer comes, whatever your definition of that is, you’ll forget to actually answer.

I don’t have this problem with email, but messaging platforms create this with read receipts, online/offline status, etc.

I think this is the most impactful factor in achieving pro-activity at a level you are comfortable with. The company might not reward you directly, but being able to change your own job description, find ways you can contribute better, etc. are all more motivating than financial incentives.

It’s easy to get burned out doing too much without a boss that’ll recognize your efforts and encourage you to do less from time to time though. A little bit of love and care, however superficial, goes a long way here.

I agree with doing the bare minimum at an expected quality if you are working in an inflexible system, but getting too comfortable there might leave you doing that until retirement.

Adobe hasn’t even sent an email saying yet charge failed and I have to update my payment method out anything else. It’s as if they are aware of how shady the cancellation fee is and won’t chase you down for it.

Having to do this is a terrible felling and I feel like a bad person, but I at least put the cancellation fee I would have paid to good use by buying Affinity Designer.

We would all be better off if prisons had rehabilitation and reintegration as their raison d'être, but with private prisons wanting to grow, I doubt that’ll happen any time soon.