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The real reason why Japan can maintain high quality services

"I want to live in Japan?" is the phrase that I frequently hear from Singaporeans and other foreigners. However, if I ask them whether they want to work in Japan or not, two typical answers would be thrown back at me. One is "Of course, I wanna work in Japan!" and another,"Nope, I don't wanna work in Japan!" Why this difference? Even though Japanese yen is weakening right now, the cost of living in Japan is still fairly expensive. So living in Japan means working in Japan, unless they are super rich.

Japan is heaven for customers

I guess most of the people who insist they want to work in Japan became a Japanese fan recently or do not understand our culture well. On the other hand, those who understood our culture for a long time tend to reply they don't want to work in Japan.

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"Is it really hard and stressful to work in Japan?"

I would say "YES" without a doubt.

As you may know our culture is known to be punctual and diligent. If you travel to Japan, you would notice that all trains in Japan are operated on time and even the services at its convenience store is akin to that of a five star hotel compared to the services in other countries. So Japan is definitely an awesome country from the perspective of a customer.

Just imgaine working in Japan

However, have you imagined how hard it is to work to maintain these high quality services in Japan? Do you know how many people suicide in Japan each year? 

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There are about 30,000 people and most of reasons they commit suicide is just due to the stress from their jobs.

As I mentioned, Japanese trains usually run on time but they accidentally go behind schedule frequently as well. As far as I can remember, at the Osaka area near my hometown, trains go behind schedule at least 2 or 3 times a month. 

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Most of the reasons for that are because someone jumped off the platform to end their life. That means, at least 2 or 3 people choose such a tragic way to end their life per month in my hometown.

2 Channel and Hatsugen Komachi

There is a huge anonymous bulletin board called 2 Channel in Japan and every day tons of Japanese people take their stress out on it by attacking and blaming other people on it. Some people even try to expel others people socially by taking advantage of both 2 Channel and twitter.

Also on the second biggest anonymous bulletin board, is Hatsugen Komachi that is operated by Yomiuri Shimbun, one of the biggest Japanese newspaper companies. Many females, especially housewives post what they feel in daily life but those thoughts never leaves their mouths in real life everyday. And sometimes Hatsugen Komachi is filled with sarcastic comments by Japanese women all over Japan.

While I admit Japanese services are of internationally high standards, especially to foreigners who can understand the language, I also think those services are built and maintained by those kind of masochistic Japanese who devote their life to work. That's why whenever foreigners tell me that Japanese services are awesome, I would reply "Yes, they are very good." but at the same time I cannot help but add the explanation as to why Japanese services are that awesome.