[rngname22]

I think you could perhaps say that Japanese are extremely highly sensitive to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_barriers in indusrial and administrative processes relative to other cultures.

If something causes friction or pain, but switching away / updating to a new system would incur a high cost or retraining time or break institutional knowledge, there seems to be an extreme bias to adapting to the pain rather than suffering the switching cost temporarily to improve the situation. There does seem to be a benefit though of extreme adaptation that occurs when a process remains unchanged for a very, very long time and actors in the system can develop extreme levels of experience.

[alasdair_]

The Japanese obsession with handwritten resumes and faxes come to mind.

[resolutebat]

For handwritten resumes, the pain is kind of the point: handwriting hundreds of copies, which must be perfect down to the last stroke, is how new grads demonstrate their diligence and commitment to future employers. (It's still an idiotic relic though.)

[bmitc]

This speaks to the idea that a lot of Japanese culture, especially business culture, is performative.

[actionfromafar]

Hardly unique, but I think it’s easy to be blind to one’s own cultural bias.

[bmitc]

It's not unique, but it is a special case.

[VectorLock]

Having posted open job reqs online in the past couple years and seen the absolute deluge of fraudulent resumes you get, I'd welcome this culture.

[pezezin]

Things are changed though. I work for a Japanese company, and when I applied for my current job the whole process was fully online.

The website was crap though, as most Japanese web services are, but that is another topic...