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Comment by alephnan | Hacker News Reader

Bank ATMs in Japan stop working between 6-9PM, and on weekends.

My debit card got de-magnetized ( like a flaky hotel room key ) and stopped working at the official bank ATM. It doesn't work at most third party ATMs, but I've found the 7-11 ATMs are quite robust and is actually able to transact. Seems like a weird security mechanism if the official bank ATM can't authenticate the card, but somehow 7-11 ATMs can bypass this and allow me to withdraw money.

The bank's website also has a very strange username / password rules. They can only contain numbers and letters, case insensitively. Also, you can't have more than 2 consecutive numbers or letters. For example, 'foo2bar' would not be valid, nor would 'fo911baz'. 'fo23ba23' works.

One of my friends in Japan is a doctor from Belarus, one of the poorest countries in Eastern Europe. She came to Japan thinking it was technologically advanced, and was shocked to find that in some aspects Belarus is more technologically modern.

I have a very cynical theory about why technology is seemingly archaic here. I think the state of digital technology is due to structural / hierarchical social reasons that these initiatives don't really address. Not directly related to the hierarchical constructs, but examples of traditional practices include:

- resumes must be hand-written

- the stack of paperwork you need to sign for an apartment is about 1 inches thick. If you're purchasing a property, you'll probably need a couple binders.

- you need to create Hanko ( personal seal stamp ) as your official signature for some paperwork

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The major US company I worked for 6-7 years ago had a global presence, but were all sort of independent. We started to merge into 1 formal company, and started reviewing IT processes.

The Japan location still had people walking through the data center with a sheet of paper and a pen, going through and manually checking servers off a list in the data center. It blew everyone's mind

I sometimes wonder if Japan's work culture that demands long hours from workers disincentivizes time-saving "automation": In the US, where the expectation is closer to 40 hours, you don't have the luxury of always assuming employees will be cool putting in 10-12 hour days.

Does it demand just long hours or also a certain level of busyness?

As walking around with a clipboard looks a lot more busy than typing.

Having worked in a data center. The "walk around with the clipboard" kinda still happens. Except its a tablet that syncs up with an actual database instead of lots of useless paperwork. Easy enough to look just as busy with the tablet.

You can't stamp a tablet with your hanko, and faxing it is difficult as well. A tablet would require changing a lot of established procedures.

Could there one day be a stamp that also has an RFID/HSM inside, that signs things digitally but gives the same UX?

Like an amiibo?

You might be onto something. I read in a book about the world's economic history and why the industrial revolution started in the UK that one of the likely reasons was the rising expense of labour which forced businesses to then find more efficient ways to work which lead to machines and industrialization. So basically In any setting with a surplus of cheap labour this incentive simply isn't there.

> Japan's work culture that demands long hours from workers disincentivizes time-saving "automation"

I reckon it's more that initiative is not expected, or even discouraged. You will work on what the direct superior tells you, end of story. And the more people the boss can lord on, the bigger his empire looks like; so there is little incentive for middle-managers to pursue efficiency.

>I sometimes wonder if Japan's work culture that demands long hours from workers

Japan is placed somewhere in the upper middle among OECD countries when it comes to average working hours per year and the percentage of workers working more than 60 hours per week.

Isn't it weird then that there are so many stories of massively overworked workers in Japan?

I wonder if those statistics are wrong, or perhaps misleading.

Using that same example, you could consider American statistics misleading. US studies show that wage theft by corporations is a multi billion dollar a year industry. Things like that lead to underreporting of actual hours worked, hence, skewing statistics.

There are a large number of workers in Japan. Even a mid-range percentage of a large number could be "so many".

By all means, the statistics could very well be wrong or misleading, but the number of stories you've heard isn't really evidence.

There were (or are) many workers work overtime without salary paid, they would be won't displayed in statistics.

You cannot find any useful information about Japan in English. For some reason orientalism makes people abandon all common sense.

I'm not sure if I buy that logic. The U.S. is also on the high side, in terms of average annual hours worked.

If we tried to extrapolate that hypothesis, shouldn't it imply that countries with considerably lower averages (e.g.: Germany, France, Sweden) ought to be considerably further ahead in automation than they currently are?

I do not know how automation is measured, but a couple Americans I've met here in Norway has said that automation is higher here.

The long hours are largely for saving face in front of the team. Nobody leaves before the boss leaves, with full trickle down effect. So if the director is working until 9pm that means his managers are there until 9pm and then the staff is sitting at their desks looking busy-ish until 9pm, regardless of utility. Anybody who leaves early is not "giving their best" to the success of the team.

Hmm, my goal is to do something memorable during a workday and not just showing up.

Let alone the fact that in IT, you can rarely produce something worthwhile after 4-6 hours.

It would also be hard to respect arbitrarily chosen rules, that have no proven effect on productivity.

It's hard to see Japan being competitive with archaic rules like the above.

It's interesting that these things don't seem to matter that much. Japan isn't some basket case, it is a developed and wealthy country. This is all the more remarkable when you consider the demographic circumstances it faces.

The average Japanese employee works less hours per year than the average American, on what comes down to having an additional two weeks off per year (1713 vs 1783 hours worked annually [1]).

Of course, with statistics like these one has to consider the fact that second-income earners working part-time jobs make the statistic skew low, which means that in countries where wages are high enough to feed a family with only one parent working, the numbers will skew higher despite less actual hours worked. I am note sure to what degree the statistics address this issue.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...

Japan also doesn't report its work hours fully. The notorious 12 hour work days in Japan are not commonly reported as such. American workers by contrast are (properly) penny counters when it comes to overtime, shift differential, et al. Every hour they work over is going to get counted and credited. The US has stricter labor laws at this point than Japan does.

This list is useless.

If you compared two families using this same system:

* Family A - 1 worker, 40 hours per week, 1 non-worker

* Family B - 2 workers, 20 hours per week each

You'd get an average of 40 vs 20, which makes it appear as though Family A works "more" than Family B.

This uses the official numbers for average hours worked in Japan, which are definitely not accurate as a lot of overtime is unreported (and unpaid), especially at particularly bad companies.

>> The average Japanese employee

Employee is now a loaded word. Does this statistic include contractors or just hired "employees"? A great many workers in the US, from delivery drivers to doctors, are no longer actual employees. Do their hours count?

Not every company gives summer and winter breaks. These companies also have awful leave policies (on average less than 10 days for companies with breaks). None of them provide sick leave (you must use your standard leave for sick days).

Overtime, until very recently, went uncounted and was unpaid. So the statistics you quote are almost certainly very wrong.

Recently the government has been cracking down on overtime (and especially on unpaid overtime), and requires companies to track overtime. It's only considered excessive overtime if it's more than 45 hours extra hours a month, to give you an understanding of just how much people are working.

Recently at the same time, gov also enforces every employee must take at least 5 leave days in a year. What's happened in smaller companies is that they removed holidays at summer (exact: Obon) and at the end of year, and enforces employee to take leave days at the removed holidays exactly. Awful.

I was an english teacher in Japan for 2 years at a junior high school.

The rep from a textbook company would go to the teacher's lounge every semester, bow to each of the teacher's one at a time in front of their desks, and ask them what they wanted to order from the catalog. The teacher's could've easily put in an order online or over the phone and I imagine the salesman had to go to each school in person.

Well, Japan has deflation/extremely low inflation which encourages bullshit jobs as people are desperate to work anywhere.

Having built out infra in Japan - it was a really strange experience, esp WRT dealing with Data Centers...

There was this one data center in Tokyo that we needed to put stuff into - and we needed a GPS antenna on the roof of the DC piped down to our cage...

The DC itself was the most aesthetically beautiful DC I have been to; Bamboo forest and waterfall in the lobby, black granite everywhere, the receptionists were two beautiful women... The place was pristine in look and super super clean.

We met with the execs that ran it and they agreed to all our requests - to pull lines from the roof to our cage, etc...

But in the end, they said yes to everything, but didnt actually do anything that was requested.

It was a waste of a trip (aside from the fun we had while not doing work), but it was stunning how much work was turned down based on them saying yes, but not actually doing any of the work requested...

This might be a cultural/linguistic barrier you went up against. It might also not be related to what happened to you, but it feels like it is.

Japanese use a lot of back-channel chatter when they talk to indicate that they are actively listening (Auzuchi). This includes saying "Yes" to indicate "Yes, I understand what you are saying" instead of "Yes, I agree that we should do as you are suggesting". They may not always indicate disagreement by saying "No" either, but simply by not committing to your suggestion when its their turn to talk (or some other, subtler expression than "No", such as a head tilt and an intake of breath)

This active listening behavior has apparently led to similar misunderstandings before.

Of course, if you made sure you actually came to a clear agreement with the execs, it's an entirely different story.

True. Cliche almost. More cultural than linguistic. Plenty of (usually different) contexts in America or the UK where "Mhm", "sure", and "we are looking forward to moving ahead with that" means nuh-uh.

I've seen a similar situation, I went to visit a Japanese supplier in the UK with a mutual customer. The customer went with a long list of demands which were all agreed to.

After the meeting the customer was very upbeat but in the end the supplier never did anything they had promised.

It was interesting to observe this as a somewhat independent outsider. I came away with the impression that the people at the supplier had some disdain for their customer.

>> with a sheet of paper and a pen, going through and manually checking servers off a list

Military here. We still do that. Classified systems have to be mustered (counted) regularly. Electronic records can be hacked/altered/spoofed remotely. In many situations that clipboard on a hook remains a perfectly valid security device, especially for systems/weapons/things that are not powered up 24/7.

In a similar vein, in some countries they just went back to paper voting after trying electronic machines (e.g. Netherlands). It's not perfect, but it electronic solution also doesn't seem to be, and overall it seems to work well enough.

There's this perception that "digital = better", but that's not always how it works. Actually, in quite a few cases the analogue solution was quite a bit better (analogue buttons, for example, but also just having some things on paper was a lot easier IMHO, like bus tickets and whatnot).

Completely understand where you are both coming from with ideas about security and "good enough" technique. But these were incredibly simple tasks which any simple automated system would suffice. Things that could be analyzed with a graph and 5 minutes of time to review it were taking days.

I also should have specified this was in an e-commerce company, so no state secrets or anything like that.

>> simple tasks which any simple automated system would suffice.

Show me a machine that can go from room to room, from vehicle to vehicle, counting rifles without error. In the dark. In the mud. When all the vehicles are parked in different places every day. Or another regular task at my unit: itemizing first aid kits. Good luck telling a robot to count the number of tourniquets in a locker without making a mess of things.

>>and "good enough" technique.

These aren't good enough things. The human being counting things and signing a piece of paper is better than the automated/online system. A human's positive control cannot be hacked remotely. Go to a hospital and see if the surgeons are ok with their tools being cleaned and counted by machines, without human backup. Will never happen.

Presumably Chuksta is referring to their original comments about the Japanese data center, not your experience in the military.

Other response to this was correct in their assumption. Those comments were additional to my initial. I was agreeing with you there is still a perfectly good time and place for this to occur, this was not one of those. Nice, safe, clean DC, with plenty of light, we're talking "how much space is left on the system drive?"

But humans can be bribed or blackmailed.

So can we defund the NSA then? If their conclusion is “lol just don’t use computers for anything important” why pay them hundreds of billions of dollars to “secure” them?

NSA's encryption trickery means little when the "secured" system isn't actually turned on. You still need to count things even when they are not in use, especially when they are in long term storage.

To be fair, Classified systems are an odd man out and all our other systems have been transitioning to electronic tracking, even most of our high side stuff have digital tracking inside of high side or without Classified information.

>I think the state of digital technology is due to structural / hierarchical social reasons that these initiatives don't really address.

Maybe a trite / cliche saying now, but the quote about Japan being the most futuristic society you could imagine in the 1990s just rung so true after visiting.

I suspect I hit the sweet spot when I lived in Japan from 1993-1995 if I interpret your comment correctly. I remember being impressed by the tech. For example: ATMs into which one inserted not only a card, but also a transaction book which would be mechanically updated (versus spitting out a slip). I still have mine. We're talking about Japan so, naturally, my bank book features Snoopy prominently on its cover.

Wait, were those not universal?

I’m from Spain and I remember those transaction books from my childhood (I was born in 1991).

By the time I was old enough to get my first debit card they were long gone though.

Those still exist and the ATMs still accept them. For savings accounts, you introduce the thing and it prints on all the pages it needs.

Bank books worked like that in Canada in the late 80s or early 90s, yeah. It's interesting what seems impressive.

I'm afraid Building Societies in Britain had transaction books that would be updated by a printer back in the 1980s. Quite useful actually, I'm rather sad we no longer have them :-(

I also lived in Japan in the mid 90's. I was a kid so of course my memory is probably pretty skewed and I have no idea about grownup things like ATMs, but I remember the tech being absolutely amazing. All the game consoles were Japanese (nintendo, sega, playstation) and often got releases first before the US. The arcades were incredible, I remember playing arcade versions of essentially DDR and guitar hero/rockband like 5 years before they caught on in the US. Cell phones also seemed to be a few years ahead of the US (back when flip phones were the rage and smaller was better). Complex vending machines were pretty common, e.g. making things like multi-step hot coffee drinks, I think it was probably a full 15 years later that I first saw one of these in the US.

It's fascinating and also kind of sad to me how much less relevant Japan today seems to be as far as consumer tech goes.

Looking back, I also think a big part of it was Tokyo as a city just being on a totally different scale than anything else I had experienced. In the 90's I don't think there was anywhere in the US remotely similar to a place like Shinjuku. Now days I think parts of midtown Manhattan or perhaps in other ways the Vegas strip might have a little bit of a similar energy, but I had never been to either of those as a child, and back then they were much different than they are today anyway.

The ease of getting around by fast, reliable trains (and especially bullet trains) also seemed super futuristic to me back then. Of course that part is still pretty far ahead of the US to this day.

That might not be a Japan thing: in the late 1990s / 2000s the US was behind Europe (as well as many bits of first-world Asia I guess) with respect to cell phones and consumer banking. For example, free SMS messages came late to the USA. And the USA still doesn't really understand debit cards (think about all the times in the US that you hand over a debit card with a Visa symbol and the cashier says "debit or credit?"; all they do in the rest of the world is scan the fucking card and let the system figure out where the money comes from.)

I haven't been asked that question in a long long time in the US. The cashier just swipes it.

Then again, I don't know anyone that uses a debit card after high school. Not using a credit card kinda implies that they're financially irresponsible right now (leaving cash back/points on the table) or were in the past and ruined their credit.

FWIW, this is not even remotely true in Europe. People use debit cards day to day, more likely to use a credit card if they don't have enough in the bank I suspect. At least where I am, there isn't much to be had in terms of points or whatever.

In the US every merchant factors in an extra 3-4 cents on every dollar for credit card transaction costs on all of their prices. If you pay with cash or debit card you eat that cost yourself, if you pay with a credit card you can make back like 2 - 4 cents of that amount depending on the purchase category, and it can really add up over time.

It's a very bizarre system, and incredibly regressive, and would actually probably be pretty simple to get rid of with federal legislation. I actually can't believe none of our current wave of progressive politicians have thought to come after it yet.

That's reversed in Europe. Using credit is what implies financial responsibility. On that subject I've seen American financial devices, such as cashback and so on, slowly sip in on this side of the Atlantic and I find it worrying.

Or are financially independent, and don't care about the equivalent of some colored class pearls.

You forgot to tell about the cheques.

Ah. Good point. The cheques/checks!

My pet theory as to why is the 90s is when japan was at its peak productive (late 20s, early 40s) population demographics, and now with the county having more seniors than children, they are stuck in the past, since the dominant age group still wields all the political and business power. The olds see no reason to change, as olds are prone to do.

You see it in the USA today too with their aging boomer ruling class, but since its not as bad as japan, they’re not staying as stuck in the past.

It is 2021, and you can still insert a transaction book along your card in Japanese ATMs. I do it regularly.

the fact that one of their big things to show off in their expo is the deep sea submarine they got running in 1991 is kind of telling of that.

An alternate history world where technology grew without centralized cloud services and privacy is still a thing.

Their systems are often inferior on a pure ease-of-use aspect, but it's not "strictly worse". I found a lot of it to be just different compromises. It's still possible to live comfortably there without a smartphone. Not so much in other "smart cities" around the world.

I've noticed this kind of thing happens a lot, especially with banks. The institution or counties that "went digital" earliest are now hampered by the tech debt and infrastructure from the early days. And slower institutions/counties can leap frog them.

I think that's just true about everything. You spend a ton of money deploying something, you're not going to rush to spend a ton of money deploying every incremental change.

Yeah I think this is why the US is so behind the curve on paying for things with phones. We went all in early on credit cards, and those are still mostly good enough for most cases, so there's not a lot of incentive to upgrade.

I feel like Apple Pay is almost everywhere I go now.

Is it? I have found there can be massive PoS differences between the coast. For example everywhere on the west coast it seems restaurants bring the CC scanner to your table and use a fancy digital checkout/pay system in restaurants. On the East coast we still hand credit cards to wait staff who give us paper receipts that then disappear to god knows where to run it.

I dont even think Apple Pay is common at all around here in Boston/Cambridge.

I figure contactless got a big unexpected boost from COVID. Suddenly not having to touch anything at all to check out because very appealing.

It was "around" for ten years previously, not making many inroads. Suddenly it's everywhere.

Hotel wi-fi is my go-to example of this. The fancy downtown hotels full of business travelers all signed contracts with digitization providers who charge $20/night for flakey and slow service. The Motel Six by the interstate has free and faster connections. For the hotels, there is the added complication that expensive hotels often have people other than the guest paying for the expenses while cheap hotels have travelers comparing on price.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_handicap_of_a_head_...

I worked in a national Japanese Lab for a year. For me, the illusion of tech advancement was shattered when I was told I needed to fill-out a form by hand to get access to a high-performance computing facility. I got my login and pass info about 5 business days after I mailed my application form by post.

When I went to register my apartment in Musashino, a woman went and found a physical folder, thumped what looked to be 10+ pounds of paper onto the desk between us, and then proceeded to find my apartment. It was found 10+ minutes later.

I was both amazed at the organization and horrified at the inefficiency.

> I was both amazed at the organization

I used to be impressed by the organization, but as I look at my shelves of Muji document filers, I realized the organization is necessary.

Real estate industry for individuals is really behind and bad for everything. They must be replace but won't because there are huge information gap. Is there good tool to fill information gap? IT! So that's why they still sucks for IT.

I had to look up this hand-written resume thing, and I found this: https://blog.gaijinpot.com/write-japanese-resume/

Some gems:

> There are plenty of photo booths, not unlike the popular purikura, that specialize in taking photos just the right size for resumes… The booths can be found on the streets of business districts or at most major train and subway stations. In fact, many machines let you pay with your train pass.

> Unlike most western resumes, you don’t need to elaborate on the duties and requirements of all your previous jobs or try to explain how it is useful for the job you are seeking.

> you should write any accomplishments that you have achieved over the years such as licenses or certificates. This even includes a driver’s license. In a city like Tokyo many people do not drive, however, some “paper drivers” get a license anyway just to appear more impressive on their resume.

> The final major section is for desires, hopes, and dreams which obviously will include for you to talk about the kind of salary that you want.

Luckily modern tech companies don't need those resumes anymore nowadays

Language is a bit confusing here.

In Japan it’s common to require a “resume” (履歴書) and “C.V” (職務経歴書).

It’s on your CV that you detail your job history and highlights. A “resume” is more like a cover sheet and follows a very specific format.

If you’re changing jobs mid-career you’ll usually need both. If you’re applying as a new grad you’ll probably only need a resume.

When I was in Japan new grads were generally expected to hand write their resume. I think this was mostly a way of filtering applicants.

It’s hard to spam job applications when you have to attend a (group) explanation meeting (説明会) and send a hand written “resume” with a picture of yourself in a suit pasted on.

The expectations were much more flexible for mid-career job changes.

This is also quite dependent on which part of Japan we're discussing.

As an example, while my daughter's record of birth in Tokyo is a printout of a digital record, my son's record of birth in Kyoto is hand-written, and other than the handwriting, looks identical to my wife's from the 1970s.

If Robert Sapolsky was in this thread, he would have probably elaborately explained why island cultures cling to tradition more strongly than the continental ones.

There's also a phenomenon where migrants are more likely to cling to their prototypical tradition than people who stay.

For example, the Taiwanese use traditional Chinese whereas Mainland China use simplified Chinese. Or the orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn. The Vietnamese diaspora.

That's what they say in anthropology, and there is truth to it, but I think you could find better examples. Israel is a new country that was populated by immigrants by and large. Hasids sought others out and settled like places because they wanted that culture, on the other hand secular jews in nyc are indistinguishable from anyone else (and they too are immigrants). China adopted simplified logograms to combat illiteracy. Honk Kong was not an immigrant city and it retained traditional characters. Cities in Vietnam exhibit some cracks in traditional culture, but go to the provinces and it's still traditional.

> For example, the Taiwanese use traditional Chinese whereas Mainland China use simplified Chinese

It may be political though. As in Taiwan keeping up with the "true" Chinese tradition -- as opposed to post-Cultural-Revolution China.

Orthodox jews are not particularly representative of Jewish migrants. I suspect your premise in general is false.

I did some business with Singapore which is pretty cutting edge with tech and has a nifty Singpass app that pulls everything a resident might need with regards to the gov’t - taxes, property, license, medical records, etc.

But then I learned that they passed the electronic signature act in 2010 and it only applies to some signatures - purchase orders, but not property leases, letters of intent but not company founding documents. Everything else needs to be on paper and often needs a company stamp.

The US, which I wouldn’t have considered that cutting edge, passed an electronic signature act 10 years earlier and it applies to pretty much everything.

It’s just one example, and yes, many Asian countries can’t let go of their paper copies and wet signatures, but still leave the US in the dust in other ways, but I thought it was fascinating where countries have challenges moving to more efficient processes.

I did an internship in Singapore once. One of the most backward things I remember about my time there is needing an "MC" (medical certificate from a doctor) when I wasn't feeling well one day.

Like goddamn, it was just a minor cold, nothing serious, I just needed to stay at home and rest, not trek out to a doctor and infect other people on public transit on my way to the doctor. There wasn't anything the doctor could do anyway other than just tell me to take some Panadol for the low grade fever, which I was doing anyway.

If it had happened again I would probably have just gone to work sick because of the silly system. I should decide if and when I need to see a doctor, not my employer. Considering how well-educated people were at the company I was at, there's no reason to not trust people when they say they need rest.

When I lived in Australia I had to present MC if I too time off on Monday or Friday. So I used to show up to work sick and get sent home because it was cheaper than seeing a doctor for a sniffle.

In Singapore we have the MC requirement but I’ve been with the company 9 years so I just tell my boss when I’m sick. Don’t bother seeing doctor. Unless I’m sick for a few days with no feeling of getting better than I go and take time off work at that point.

Damn. Even in Australia? Yeah, I mean, the employee should decide if they need medical help. The company should trust the employee if they say they are sick. Staying at home in bed is a valid way to deal with minor sickness and minor injury. Not all health issues need a doctor. The body is wonderfully good at recovering from minor issues by NOT trekking out when you don't need to. That fact should be recognized.

I generally didn't understand at all the bureaucratic trust issues in such a well-educated place where most people were trustworthy to start with.

Australia is super common for people to take sickies on fridays or mondays to get long weekends hence the request for mc. While tuesday-Thursday usually not required. Depends on the company tho. Singapore is more strict tho.

> super common for people to take sickies on fridays or mondays to get long weekends

Why not just give them enough PTO so they can get a few long weekends here and there, and they won't need to lie.

I assume PTO is personal time off? In Australia its called AL, or Annual Leave.

The problem is that people will have a huge party weekend then be hungover on Monday, or want to spend Friday getting the party started. And they decide this at the last minute, so they take a sickie instead of planning in advance. Often you cannot take AL ~1-2 weeks, you need to plan it out in advance.

I don't mind that Australia has 6 weeks of PTO (4 weeks holiday, 2 weeks sick), but I wish it was a little easier to combine the two. Some companies are very strict with sick leave not going into negative, so may get anstsy if you use too much. It would be nice if we had 6 weeks pooled. I also don't like that emplyoers can mandate the 1 week shut down over christmas too, which eats into your own leave.

> very strict with sick leave not going into negative

Why? Do they at least allow unpaid negative sick leave? Some surgeries and heart operations and things need a month to recover.

Pooling it IMO isn't always the best result. The problem is that the people who get sick a lot are the ones who also get a lot of work stress, the work stress compounds into more sickness due to lost sleep / lost vitamin D / etc., and they are actually the ones who need the holiday time the most. People who have zero health issues probably have good work life balance already, at least enough to get exercise, eat healthy, and sleep well, and although they too deserve holiday, they need it less than the people who are already exhibiting the symptoms of overworking (lots of body issues).

Especially in the US where many only have 2 weeks of paid leave, or in many cases, 0 weeks.

You can take leave its just not paid. IIrc you can take abscences of up to 12 months due to illness or inury unpaid, before they may be justified in letting you go.

Most jobs have at least: 4 weeks paid leave (annual) 2 weeks sick leave (which may require a note depending on company policy) 12 months parental leave for new/adoptive parents 6 weeks of Long service leave after 7 years, growing at the rate of roughly one week per year thereafter In addition to this we have 13 days of public holiday

Source: Australian employment lawyer

Don’t they already get like 25 days off in Australia?

Couldnt find a bulk bill doctor?

That's better than in Japan where people come to the office with full blown colds and a mask. Viral containment is not seen as a collective good.

Coming from London, I find Singapore rather backwards in many areas - especially where tech has to intersect with culture or other industries. Compared to Japan and Germany they're ahead, of course, but everything in Singapore seems to involve a ton of paperwork and calling people. The country overall is _extremely_ bureaucratic.

Lots of things that in London would be buy online, same/next day delivery were, in Singapore, have an in person, shake some hands, sign a bunch of contracts and then wait two months for delivery. On the other hand, they have things like Sim Lim Square, which initially seemed like an anachronism to me (like Tottenham Court Road in the 90s), but then when contrasted to ecommerce situation there, I kind of understood it.

Paying for things was confusing, most shops had 3 or so readers for different payment systems, and sometimes things that were supposed to work didn't (e.g. Google Pay or NFC). The details are long and confusing and involve lots of acronyms like NETS, ENETS, EFTPOS, etc. but overall I wasn't impressed.

In fintech specifically (my area), their regulators have a bunch of rules that basically force you to do things the old fashioned way.

Isn't Belarus one the most rapidly innovating on the digital society ? or is it another eastern country .. I forgot.

That said banking may not be the best example about japan.. for a long time everything mobile was years ahead in japan.

Maybe all brains died at Sony Computer Entertainment :)

Might be thinking about Estonia, or E-stonia.

could be yeah

Belarus main cities are modern. It didn't not feel like a poor country during my visits.

but is it still a poor country or just a slightly ignored post USSR small block people really knew.

Belarus is clean and well maintained, but it's still poor.

>Bank ATMs in Japan stop working between 6-9PM, and on weekends.

That's really not the case. It will of course vary by bank and by location. Counter Example showing 4-24 hours availablity 7 days a week in Japanese: http://map.bk.mufg.jp/b/bk_mufg/info/BA590467/

7-11's ATM is exceptionally well made ATM in Japan (in other words, others sucks). They correctly investigated UX, so they won't beep annoying sound and have Topre's numpad. Try it if you visit.

Don't forget the prevalence of faxing as well.

Yah. Well. The ATMs in Germany are often inacessible during the night. Because of vandalism, or something. So you have to search for one that is outside, and not in some closed self-service center. Even in large cities, or especially there, because potentially more vandalism.

edit: Or use some gas/fuel station, which would be the equivalent to 7-11, I guess. Which doesn't work with every station, btw. (I mean, getting cash.)

> For example, 'foo2bar' would not be valid, nor would 'fo911baz'. 'fo23ba23' works.

But according to what you wrote, "foo2bar" would be OK? It seems to satisfy the 'no more than 3 consecutive numbers or letters' requirement.

Also, the obvious answer to this is RLE compressing your passwords. ;) foo2bar could be easily written as f1o221b1a1r1 to make it acceptable.

Sorry off-by-1 error.

I meant exclusive of 3, not inclusive. So no more than 2.

The "strange" password limitations are probably due to some mainframe backing authentication.

The broader "this" seems at the root of a lot of Japanese IT anachronisms.

Incredibly conservative culture (especially with regards to business hierarchy) + early social digitization = huge number of antiquated systems

The typical way things would finally get replaced in most companies ("If you're not migrated by X date, we're cutting it off, and your stuff will stop working") seems pretty anathema to Japanese corporate political expectations ("Don't make someone else look bad").

Or maybe some weird TRON thing? I know that Japan has some interesting and widespread-yet-exotic-for-us embedded things, some of which are bound to end up in their ATMs.

> resumes must be hand-written

I like this one, a hand-written paper helps in judging someone, which I guess is the ultimate goal of a résumé.

I'm curious how well this works for evaluating physicians

I guess it sort of works for surgeons

This sounds awful. I have terrible handwriting, and handwriting skills are entirely non-essential in my line of work. People would be tossing my resume because it's hard to read, even though it has no bearing on my ability to do the work I'm applying for.

sounds like japan may not be the place for you then

You can get by in Japan as a foreigner no problem without ever having to hand write a resume, you just have to seek out the right companies.

I imagine it's a lot harder to avoid as a Japanese citizen.

yeah because they genuinely have lower expectations of you as a foreigner

It sounds to me like a measure of conformity, because surely you now have to choose from a set of recommended handwriting styles that are considered "acceptable". By straying out of the standards, you're risking the subjective appreciation of the interviewer.

Do they test you on your handwriting during the interview to make sure that you wrote your resume? If they do, then it implies that they truly think that they can see something in how someone writes. If they don't then why not let the machine do it?

>It sounds to me like a measure of conformity,

yes. people need to realize if they want to work/live in japan stuff like this comes with the territory.

And France, believe it or not. Somehow the notion that penmanship, under professional scrutiny, can reveal enough about a person to influence a job interview or mental health wormed its way into French (probably a few other countries as well) culture and never apparently left. Despite having no or little scientific backing.

Then again, Americans seem to love personality tests like the Myers-Briggs in a similar way despite equally strong criticism of their utility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphology

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22198554

I dunno i think its kinda cool. its not necessarily a bad thing to hold people to higher standards and have expectations of excellence in everything you do. that is part of the reason japan is such a nice place.

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