Working style in Japan

I’m working for a small Japanese IT company in Tokyo.

Our staff are just under 30 people, but half of them are from 7 countries different.

And I have some foreign friends who are from several countries.

We sometimes talk about the working style of each country.

Most of them said to me that Japanese work too hard.
(They are working for Japanese companies.)

One of our coworkers is Danish.
He suggested us that if we could change our working style, some good things might be happened.

(He said that for example, it was good for us to work for 4 days and rest 3 days.)

He and other foreign coworkers(American,Australian) have the same way of thinking about an appropriate
working style.

By the way I also sometimes guide foreigners around Tokyo.

All of them also said to me that Japanese work too hard.
(Some of them came to Japan for business.)

Their home countries are different from each other, so now I think the “Japanese” working style is the strangest in the world.

One day, I said to my Korean coworker that I would change my working
time.

Now, my company starts at 9:00am and finishes at 6:00pm.

But I often must do over time.

So I sometimes finish my work too late time(for example,9:00pm or 10:00pm)

If I didn’t have so many jobs, I could meet my friends, learn English or other languages, read books, do house work, practice the Shamisen, run, and more after my work.

So, I talked about this topic to my Korean coworker.

But he said to me that our client’s schedules are the most important thing.

I think so too, therefore I like my job.

But I think that more important things in our life are good health of the body and mind, and good relationships between our families and friends.

He addied mind that, in Korea, the circumstance is worse than Japan.
The Korean social security system is 10 years behind than Japan.

He said that he guesses the Chinese social security system is much worth.

But, I heard from my Chinese coworker, in China, that the people’s working style is similar to Europe.

In Japan, to continue working for young woman who have children is very
difficult.

But in China, to continue working for a woman is easy, because her family generally supports her.

I think job is very important for us, but a side from our jobs, there are many important things.

In Japan, our parents and teachers had never thought us about the meaning of jobs.

So when we graduated from school and started working, we were confused.
But, then we didn’t have any chance to think about our jobs, because we are all very busy everyday.

I’m very lucky to know about some working styles in several countries.

I’m 30 years old, I like my job and I want to enjoy my life more.
But time is coming which I must decide about my future.

So I’m thinking about this topic.

How about in your country?