Multiplying and Replenishing Japan

I can't take credit for finding this article and video done by CNN, but I think it's nevertheless funny and insightful.

With a work culture used to 12 hour days (sometimes more), I find it an interesting sociological tidbit that Canon has to forcibly turn off the lights to get people to leave. When I was working in LA, if you were told by the company that you could leave early, you left early...and oftentimes skipped lunch so you could leave even earlier. Here, leaving early, even when the company tells you that it's OK, is not such an easy task. I mean, I'm surprised that turning off the lights was such an easy fix. Some people in my office would need the power cut, the office tear-gassed, and then to be carried away by commandos before they would leave.

Then there's the whole "big brother" aspect of your company telling you to go forth and procreate. It just takes the whole romance out of it when "it" becomes your civic and corporate duty, right?

But I have to hand it to Canon, with work hours as they are, at least they resisted the urge to take a page out of the US prison system by going the conjugal visit route!