Very similar to patio11's writeup. Note the same caveats apply, more or less: this is working at a big Japanese company, which is far from all of them.
This is not merely anecdata: the most obvious external evidence of traditional Japanese management is work hours by professional staff and that metric is inversely correlated with size of business when you average it across all firms in the country. Firms with 100 workers work longer days than salarymen at megacorps (again: on average). This is one reason they're seen as rather less desirable to work for.
As one of the anecdata at a company of around 70 people, almost everyone is on flex time, aside from specific departments like customer support. There is no pressure to work overtime, though many end up doing so in order to meet specific deadlines. In addition, everyone freely uses vacation and sick time. In fact, I have previously been told that I should use more of my vacation days.
Edit: I should note that there are only a handful of people here who would meet the description of a typical salaryman.
Warning: it's very long.