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Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

> 1. Upon entering the store, write down at the reception desk how many words and by what time you are going to write your manuscript.

> 2. The manager asks you every hour how your manuscript is coming along.

> 3. You are not allowed to leave the store until you have finished writing your manuscript or writing project.

Sounds like a cute idea. I wonder what would happen if you decided you wanted to leave before finishing. Do they berate you? Do you lose a deposit? I imagine you can't hold customers hostage or trap them in your cafe if they actually want to go.

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Yeah, according to the cafe's website, they don't physically stop you from leaving. In fact, one of the FAQs specifically says that you can leave temporarily if you need to. It's just that they won't allow you to pay your tab unless you've reached your goal.

As others have said, it's about the social pressure. I doubt the question of "can we legally enforce this rule" was a major concern.

Wait, so the punishment for not finishing is that... you don't have to pay?

Japanese culture is weird to a westerner in some ways. Their people are just as shitty and willing as any other humans to exploit for personal gain, but it's never admitted or discussed in "polite" company. If someone ripped them off like this, they'd be reported to police for whatever the dine&dash offense is, but everyone would pretend that it never happened.

There's something desperately aspirational about certain parts of their culture.

For anyone else reading, this does not seem like a qualified or legitimate take on Japanese life from my experience of a year of actually living in Tokyo. Maybe the OP has had equal personal experience and just percieved it differently, but there's almost no chance a Japanese person in Tokyo would dine and dash, and being raised in their culture from birth absolutely does make one less inclined to do things like that.

Post-modernist views that all cultures make people who are equally bad and good and that it has little effect simply don't hold up to even a cursory analysis of available statistics on the regional rates of crime/violence/exploitation worldwide.

Crime statistics only work if they're recorded honestly. Lots of crimes are seriously underreported in Japan, but it's been getting better over the last decade or so.

Humans are humans are humans. Get any large enough group of them and some percent will be law breakers. This isn't post-modernist, it's common sense.

Culture has an impact, obviously, but police corruption, underreporting, and maintaining reputation play a significant factor in Japan's low crime rates.

I witnessed zero crimes committed living for a year in the middle of a 30 million person city (Tokyo) . I also witnessed no yelling, no littering, no fighting in public, no speaking loudly or playing music on public transportation, no public shouting of vulgarity, and no theft. I left my Macbook in a Starbucks unattended for an hour and walked around a mall and it was still there when I came back.

All places and people and cultures are not the same. There are objective measures one can use to see this is true. Take a walk around Manhattan (~11 million) or any other city in the world and try to replicate my results.

Culture matters and has an effect on making better citizens and therefore a better quality of life for everyone. It is not simply a matter of them pretending to have these virtues, they have them and the evidence is reflected both in numbers and ones personal experience if they visit.

Having lived in Tokyo long enough to have witnessed crime (with blood on the pavement), reported crime to the police, have people admit their minor criminal behaviour to me, and also hear second hand reports of serous criminal behaviour of people I know, I would limit the time I leave a high end laptop unattended in a busy Starbucks to the time it takes to order a refill/snack or go to the toilet :-) in fact I’ve done it probably hundreds of times. Which is to say I have no real concerns about crime there, but am no idealist. I would not leave a laptop unattended in my own country for any amount of time, the culture of westerners is far more opportunistic for even minor individual gain, and much less conscious of one’s place in society.

I think you're overstating the obviousness and up-frontness of crime in most of the US. I can't recall the last time I "witnessed crime" out and about here in America. Public urination or something a few years ago, probably. Or littering more recently, though you mention it separately. "I didn't witness crimes in a year" doesn't sound exceptional.

Yelling or mental health issues, sure, there's a different culture there in America, but "loud vs quiet" as a cultural different doesn't seem like a major moral issue, and it's well known that the US is handling mental health poorly, so sure, I'll give you that.

But then on the flip side, Tokyo is also notorious for public-but-sneaky sexual assault, no?

I've lived in Japan two years and echoing what the other commenter said, there's definitely crime in Japan, moreso in Tokyo, but it's usually more low key and I don't think as widespread (or violent).

- A delinquent student I had who dropped out in junior high caught up with me and told me how he went to jail and was a low level gangster.

- I also knew an Australian older guy who got jumped by some teenagers when he was drunk.

- Also a drunk guy tried to hit on a girl I knew while we were walking to the train station and literally tried to physically drag her somewhere and hit my other friend who wanted to talk to him peacefully.

- A creepy old guy showed two junior high girls a binder full of pictures of underage girls in a supermarket food court and was trying to proposition them or something. My friend used to be their English teacher and confronted him in Japanese. When I turned to look at the supermarket, everyone was dead silent mouth agape. The old security guard lady who worked there was crying.

- I believe I also spoke to a cop or an older person who said during the earthquake their was concern of people stealing or commiting crimes and they'd do it quietly.

- There's also the women's only train in place because of chikan or train perverts who try to grope women during rush hour. I don't know of many other countries that have it.

I definitely think Japan is one of the safest countries in the world. I left my phone on a bike and found it still there hours later, but there's definitely crime. I also don't know if it's great to conflate yelling, littering, etc. with crime, but there's definitely a correlation.

It's a sad reflection on the state of safety in many of the world's cities but...this is quite tame. I think the question is: what are the chances of being a target in the worst crimes, which are being randomly assaulted/mugged/murdered/raped. From the women I know who have been to Japan they've recounted that it's one of the few countries they felt safe (in most areas) walking home late at night. Of course, that attitude probably leads to a few bad outcomes occasionally.

Again, I think Japan is one of the safest countries in the world. I'm mainly addressing the parent's comments that they've never seen crime in Japan and sometimes the meme in Japan that there's no crime at all.

I’m curious about your ex-student being a low level gangster. What kind of activities did he do?

This is one part of Japanese society I know very little about. My wife always talks about yakuza being bad but can’t provide an details other than “they are bad.”

She hates going to Kabukicho but it never feels particularly unsafe to me where as in the US there’s definitely places I would avoid at all cost.

I think he went to jail for being in a fight.

I don't know much about gangster's in Japan, but I'd say from my limited experience that they manage basically gray-market and black-market businesses. E.g. hostess clubs and adult entertainment, some of the general entertainment industry, maybe drugs to a small extent, loan sharking, gambling and other related things.

I would say that the violence typically doesn't bleed out to the general population unless you get invovled in some way, but you will get ripped off if you do business with them (again, I have very limited experience with this).

As a low-level gangster, he probably was trying to get people on the street to attend an adult entertainment location (or scouting new actresses) and do general gopher jobs for higher-ups.

Edit: Yeah, Kabuki-cho isn't that bad to be honest. To see the real dangerous Yakuza part of town, you have to go to Yoshiwara. I went there with a local and there was a dude walking around with no shirt and carrying a sword over his shoulder. He told me to not look anyone in the eye. There were police on each side of the street.

I lived in the middle of Chicago for 4 years and never saw any crimes while I was there; littering and (harmless) drunks perhaps the worst of it.

Of course, I naturally avoided any area/time where I expected crime to occur… but I didn’t have to exert any real efforts to do so (at least partly because I had nothing drawing me to shitty areas; Devon St and chinatown were the worst areas with any draw… and they’re not too bad even at night).

Lots of ambulances passing by though. And lots of stories.

But easy enough to replicate. Cities are big places. There’s a lot of ways to experience them.

~Aside: Looking through your comment history you seem really cool and like we have quite a bit in common, feel free to hit me up over discord!

Intrestingly, I was in a little bar in Ōimachi, Tokyo just the other day. (First time in ...years? Because of COVID-19.) A slightly drunk local guy stormed in with a printed security camera picture of a guy that had committed several dine & dash incidents (and a theft of some decorative jewelry) in the neighboring bars during the last weeks, the bar we were in being one of the victims. He came to hear the story of the owner of the bar and to confirm the guy in the picture was the same, and then left to spread the word to other places.

I have lived almost 7 years in Japan, and this was the first time I heard of such an incident happening somewhere around me, but "食い逃げ" ("kuinige", dine & dash) is a word you tend to encounter here and there.

> from my experience of a year of actually living in Tokyo

Sounds like we have an expert here.

> there's almost no chance a Japanese person in Tokyo

So you’re saying there’s a chance?

GP did not say everyone does it, obviously Japan is very safe, but it’s far from perfect. People just don’t report everything and just don’t talk about it. Hang out around a pachinko to find out more about Japanese people.

I would say petty theft is absolutely less common in Japan and I will leave my laptop in a starbucks while I go to the toilet or go to order something which I wouldn't in Europe or the US for example.

However, I have seen crime in Japan, a close Japanese friend of my non-japanese ex-wife stole her bankbook and proceeded to withdraw money (my ex-wife used the same pin for her phone and her bankbook and so her friend most likely saw the pin from the phone). My ex-wife reported it to the police, the "friend" gave the money back and got a slap on the wrist but no real consequences.

My female roommate also had a lot of experiences of various sexual crimes, over the 7 years she lived in Japan, her underwear were stolen once, she saw a flasher who was completely naked under his coat and opened it when she passed by and she was concerned enough by someone following her over multiple blocks that she went to the koban.

And finally, as a male, I once went to the urinals in the toilet in osaka and noticed the guy to my right making noises, he was looking at me and touching himself... Kind of turned me off for years of public toilets.

So, the myth of Japan being crimeless at least to me seems like a myth. Crime takes different form, sexual crimes are definitely in my anecdotal experience more common than in other countries, theft of belongings are definitely less of an issue than in Europe/US.

Also, I don't think any of the above crimes would show up in statistics. I'm pretty sure the first one which was straight theft would not have been reported at all.

However, as a counterpoint to reporting, my ex-wife knew of a foreign student at her university who stole for a bit more than 1,000 jpy of things from a combini, was deported and not allowed to enter Japan for 5 years. I'm pretty sure that any crime committed by foreigners in Japan will always be reported and treated harshly.

Unless it's umbrellas. I probably don't understand some social custom here, but what should I call it when I leave my umbrella at the entrance and it is gone when I come back 5 minutes later...

If it's one of those clear umbrellas, it's borrowing from the common pool :)

More seriously, yes umbrellas definitely disappear very quickly, I have however noticed that the more intricate an umbrella is, the less likely it is stolen.

So it's fine to just take another one then?

Kind of clever. If in the depths of a block I could see myself giving up a deposit for the maximum self-destructive experience... but running out without paying crosses a moral line and hurts someone other than me that I couldn't do it.

It reminds me of the possibly apocryphal story of a daycare that got tired of parents picking their kids up late. They decided to start charging a fee every time a parent was late to pick up. Once they did, parents were actually more likely to pick their kids up late. Presumably because they figured they were paying for the privilege.

Not apocryphal :)

https://freakonomics.com/2013/10/what-makes-people-do-what-t...

Well it’s not it the protestant bible, so it’s not canon, but it’s not part of the apocrypha either. I just don’t know.

Why doubt the claim? It is initially counter intuitive but actually makes sense if you think about it.

In any case, it’s not just a story, it is described in this paper:

https://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/gneezy/pub/docs/fine...

I was making a dumb comment about the use of the word apocryphal. I thought I was clever last night.

I’ve read about the daycare fines before and didn’t have reason to doubt it any more or less than other anecdotes I’ve read. The paper you linked seems like pretty good evidence that it actually happened — assuming the rest of the paper supports the abstract.

$1/min = paying for the privilege

My kids’ old preschool must have read Freakonomics and instead charged $5/min. My wife once fell asleep and was charged $90 for being 18 min late (I got a call at 6). At least it wasn’t $5/min/kid (2 kids).

Mostly, if parents were running late, they’d ask another parent to check out their kid and watch them for a few.

There’s the real incentive. If you don’t show up some other weirdo parent has access to your kid.

If you leave without paying it also means you're probably never be allowed to use the Cafe again (just like any cafe/restaurant really...)

It’s Japan. Being the kind of person who leaves without paying is… not an aspiration.

They leave the tab open, and possibly even leave the meter running[1] while you'e on a "break" - so you may end up paying for the time you were not in the cafe.

1. TFA doesn't say one way or the other, but the fact that they don't accept cash leaves the possibility open

Their website indicates that the meteor is indeed left running.

This is Japan, in a nutshell

This works in Japanese society.

I do think it's undervalued how a bit of social pressure can really help you be more productive. I mean I'm sitting at home typing a comment on HN, because there's no colleagues or employers that can peek at what I'm doing. My work productivity has really taken a dive thanks to WFH.

I totally agree, and I've observed how my productivity has gone up dramatically now that I'm back to the office. It's fairly empty, so it's not like there is actually many people watching over my shoulder, but somehow while I'm at my desk there I feel very little desire to do anything other than work.

Sure. I'm much more comfortable at home and in the long run get more done because I'm likely to actually stay at a company for a longer period of time... But there is nothing like being in an office and feelings like you have to be locked in for productivity.

I can simulate a lot of that with pairing though.

They are lucky that Douglas Adams will never visit.

I mean it is japan. If we go with the cliché, it would be hard to find any japanese writer who would choose social emberassment over actually doing the job. Especially if they chose to buy into this thing themselves.

Nah, people will just sternly say “I need to leave” and go. They’re not ants.

People underestimate writers' will power and the effort and sacrifices they will do to _not_ do their job. Even (especially ?) in Japan.

As a programmer, I need to understand this better.

The article notes you can choose your level of PRESSURE when you sign in -- perhaps trying to leave with a higher level of pressure selected would get you angrily berated, while at the lower levels you'd just get a mild chiding.

What’s the highest level look like? Maybe chained to the desk or sumo wrestler blocking the doorway?

I think that only happens in Anime e.g. Shirobako

In real life that should count as kidnapping

"Keep writing, you worthless maggot!"

> Do they berate you?

The website describes it as:

> Mild: they ask if you met your goal when you pay

> Normal: they ask about your progress once an hour or so

> Hard: like Normal, and staff will frequently stand behind you silently applying pressure.

The official FAQ is written quite informally, so I think it's safe to assume the cafe's "rules" are more "casual guidelines meant to help writers get their work done", and not "literal rules that will be rigidly enforced in some particular way".

To think I'd been getting the 'hard' service for free last time I had to set foot in an office.

Great example of a commitment device:

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

I like the idea of losing a deposit.

Do they berate you?

Would love to know the interview/training/standard operating procedure for this position.

I highly doubt they berate you. The Japanese place high importance on public manners. I think at worst is the frequency of nagging. Are you done yet?

You might have missed it, the cafe is at the back of a sumo arena.

It's most likely based on the honor system. I mean, if you're willingly paying a visit there yourself, you came there to get work done and have some fun doing so, not to actively game and exploit the system. Plus, the cafe only has 13 seats, and the website says that the space is usually a photography studio (and only operates as a writing cafe during off-peak hours), so whatever irregularity that comes up can probably be dealt with on a case-by-case basis-- this isn't a public web app that needs to automatically defend itself from all sorts of attacks from any random hacker in the world.

I recall someone hiring someone to slap them if they got off task, I wonder if they had options like this to spice up the experience at the cafe hah

Hold a deposit. You can break the glass if you really need to make an exit, but make it painful.

If I was the owner, I would not allow the person back in unless it was a legit emergency bail out.

Being interrupted every hour would kill the zone for me.

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