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How Japanese black companies oppress workers (2014)

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178 points rawgabbit | 2 comments | 18 Nov 24 04:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.447s | source
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infotainment ◴[18 Nov 24 04:44 UTC] No.42169771[source]▶
> "I can't quit the job. If I say I'm going to quit, I'll be threatened that I will have to pay damages for quitting."

Interestingly, this is actually possible under Japanese law/legal precedent. If an employee, for example, decides to put in notice and then half-ass their job until their departure date, a company could actually sue the employee and win.

Other Japan-labor-law fun fact: if you are a contract worker, it is literally illegal for you to quit prior to your contract expiry date. Hope you like that job you signed onto!

Obligatory disclaimer: IANAL

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vr46 ◴[18 Nov 24 04:48 UTC] No.42169791[source]▶
All this has gone a long way to make me feel better about not keeping up my Japanese language skills after university. My youthful deep reverence for Japan and its culture shifted into realpolitik as I learned more and more, and I think another watch of Fear And Trembling is in order…
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ninetyninenine ◴[18 Nov 24 04:56 UTC] No.42169820[source]▶
I kinda want to go there and purchase a 10k house in a village and chill. It’s basically a place where you can retire. I know a bunch of white people who have already done this.

Just like how Japan isn’t characterized fully by anime it’s not fully characterized by corporate culture either.

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pezezin ◴[18 Nov 24 06:55 UTC] No.42170365[source]▶
I actually live in the Japanese countryside, so let me tell you that there are two reasons why those houses are so cheap:

1. The construction quality of the average Japanese house is absolute garbage. Most likely you will need to demolish it and rebuild from scratch.

2. Outside of the big cities, Japan sucks hard. The average small city or village is just a bunch of big box stores and houses scattered everywhere. Many Japanese people want to move to the big cities just to enjoy proper services and some excitement in their lives. So if you move here I hope that you enjoy staying alone at home, because there is not much else to do.

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1. shiroiushi ◴[18 Nov 24 09:26 UTC] No.42170970[source]▶
>The average small city or village is just a bunch of big box stores and houses scattered everywhere.

This sounds much like rural America. Houses scattered everywhere, and a super Walmart.

The big difference I've noticed here in Japan (I live in Tokyo), at least from my window on the train going through rural areas, is that the houses tend to be clustered together much more closely. In rural America, everyone wants many acres of land to themselves, but in rural Japan, the land is usually used for farming and the houses are quite close together in a hamlet.

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2. pezezin ◴[19 Nov 24 09:03 UTC] No.42181342[source]▶
I understand what you mean, and perhaps "a collection of hamlets" is a more accurate description.

In my experience, your perception depends heavily on your personal background. The city where I live (Misawa) hosts an American military base, and when talking with them nobody ever complaints about the urban sprawl, I guess it is normal for them.

However, I am from Spain, a country where even small villages are very compact (we prefer to build all the houses together, and keep the farms outside), so for me Japanese villages feel very sparse. Another big difference is that in Spain we value public areas (the third space), and here public spaces range between infrequent and not-existent.