A German company troubled by incredible lazy of Japanese people

           Frank  Aug. 24, 2014 in Waterloo, Canada

This was excerpted from my Aug. 24, 2014 article Overheated real estate market is ruining Canadian economy from Japan mirroring Canada.

An engineer of China who works for a German company in taking charge of the branches in South Korea, China and Japan, after working a while in Japan, he was shocked by the lazy of Japanese employees, and completely lost the good impression for them.

Then he wrote an article post on the website and to be widely reproduced on the internet. I excerpt and translate some as follow. For facilitating narrative, here, I name the writer as Jim.

The Japanese employees are working overtime almost every day, but, only for getting overtime pay rather than for the need of production.

Jim arranged a simple task to a Japanese technician who dragged two days to finish. The same work, if, in China, a new graduated young man can finish just in half an hour.

In a break time, Jim complains the matter with German colleagues, one German colleague said that this guy was a good one, since he did not drag for a month as that of others. Another German colleague even suspected that Japanese employee was dozing when working.

Japanese employee did not like to take responsibility, when encountering some work trouble, usually; they will look for helping with endless complaining.

German company plans to open new production lines in Japan, so, sent Japanese staff to Germany for training. The same project in China, within a year, production lines was already operating at full capacity in three shifts for 24 hours a day. But in Japan, it took two years still in the state of machine commissioning.

The workers of China have mastered all the skills within the three months training in Germany. The German teacher said: you have learnt everything on the training plan, you may go back to China now, and we have nothing for teaching any more.

Japanese spent six months in Germany, but, after went back to Japan; they could not work properly, and complaining that Germans did not teach them well. Germans angered with that: in Germany, we were teaching you hands by hands, and you also said that you have mastered every thing already. The Japanese fought back immediately: Sorry, we forgot, our memory is too bad to remember that.

Germans were angered and collectively applied for vacation to leave Japan as a protest. The German company had to allow them to China by the name of studying for appeasing their anger.

Jim went back China with the German colleagues together.

When they held a cup of coffee to watch Workshop through the window glass of the upstairs office, the production was in an orderly busy, workers were loading and unloading on the production line, the transportation-cars were running to and fro between the production sites and the storages.

All of Germans was shocked and some even exclaimed with that: my God, here is simply a heaven. One of them said with that, they (Japanese) have been sleeping for 20 years, let them sleeping for another 20 years, then, Japan will decline as a developing country, and while, China will destine to be a developed country.

Now, in many Japanese companies, employees are mostly 40-50 years old, rarely under 30. Many young Japanese are staying in unemployed. Besides the cause of the economic recession, the other cause is Japan's "special" corporate culture, which emphasizing work-qualifications and work-records, so that young Japanese have lesser work chance. Some girls have to do "compensated dating" for making money. Some boys also have to make money by doing “duck” - male prostitute.

Following, let’s look at the reason for the decline of Japanese corporations following the eyes of Mr. Kondo Daisuke.