[rdouble]

Japanese salaryman "overtime" is very strange.

In my experience, employees are not doing more work, they are at the office trying to look busy until the boss goes home. Sometimes the boss is sleeping at his desk, and people are sitting around looking at blank documents on the screen.

[flocial]

The boss is usually avoiding the train wreck that is his family life. It used to be that ever so often they would get off early, around 8PM, so they could go drinking to hang out some more until the last trains. Not so much with the younger generation. These business practices give new meaning to "Japanese miracle".