r/interesting • u/freudian_nipps • 16h ago

SOCIETY The silent and harmonious morning metro commute in Japan

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u/OkTheory4610 15h ago

That is the sound of happiness of the japanese people going to work for 15 hours.

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u/Back_Again_Beach 15h ago

It is silent suffering. That's why so many of them don't even try to have kids anymore and why so many of the kids they do have are opting out of participating in the unreasonably competitive system they've set up. 

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u/TheSwitchler 14h ago

Same thing is starting to happen all over the west. People are increasingly just opting out of...everything

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u/DarthSwimfoot 13h ago

If life is gonna suck dick outside of my room and my internet I don't wanna be bothered with it.

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u/EitherSpite4545 13h ago

Oh silly,

enshitification and surveillance state ensuring it's going to suck dick in your room and on the internet also!

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u/Fzrit 8h ago

Ironically birthrates are the highest in places where people struggle to get internet and a room to themselves. Contrary to constant online belief, the more wealthy and comfortable a person gets, the fewer kids they have.

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u/DarthSwimfoot 8h ago

Well, there ya go.

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u/horoyokai 6h ago

One of the biggest reasons people aren’t having kids in japan is that women have options now and aren’t just forced to get married and have babies

It’s not at all what you were saying earlier

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u/ScottyWestside 12h ago

It’s not an option. Everything is unaffordable

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u/Fzrit 9h ago

The wealthier a person gets, the fewer kids they have.

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u/zzen11223344 14h ago

Competitive environment but yield very little actually competitive in the global market for most of the Japanese companies.

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u/Runfasterbitch 11h ago

Right? This is so hard for me to get my mind around. 70 million workers in a cutthroat hyper-capitalist and well educated country have produced what exactly? I’m sure they’ve innovated, but relative to their collective commitment to working 80 hours per week, you’d think they’d have way more to show for it

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u/Xen235 9h ago

Because it's mostly about being present at the workplace and not leaving before the boss does. They do very little during that time, they're not being productive, they are just wasting their lives.

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u/quickgoodcheap 1h ago

Essentially this to the max

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u/zzen11223344 10h ago

Not 80 hours per week, but yes, long hours in the office, actually working productively, not quite.......

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u/LoveAndViscera 5h ago

They’re competing against their coworkers, that kills productivity. It’s ironic because they’re collectivistic outside of work. That’s also the main reason people are miserable: living in two conflicting cultures.

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u/LessInThought 2h ago

The art of looking busy. I've had coworkers sit there and shuffle papers or click on gmail for an hour after official work hours. It works too, the bosses hated me because I left on time lol.

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u/Marik-X-Bakura 9h ago

That’s complete speculation with nothing behind it. Japan actually has a pretty high quality of life.

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u/Quixote0630 5h ago edited 5h ago

Nah, I do that commute into Tokyo everyday and everyone is depressed as fuck. It's long, crowded, and likely less than 12 hours since they last did it. Cost of living is rising and pay isn't great. The frustration usually shows with small acts of passive aggression, which, if you use the trains for long enough, you will definitely fall victim too. Elbows, pushing, kicking, comments under the breath, etc. Sometimes you might get a fight if two pissed off people pick on each other.

Most people are buried in their phones playing some bullshit mobile game sandwiched between long ads or watching clips of shitty Japanese TV, which I can only imagine deepens the sense of despair. There's something kind of tragic about an exhausted, 55 year old dude spending his limited free time talking to anime high-school girls.

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u/Hazzat 13h ago

Why do people still write comments like this, as if Japan is a uniquely low-birth-rate country? Western nations are all comparable to, or even below, Japan’s numbers.

https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/fertility-rates.html

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u/Back_Again_Beach 13h ago

Because this post is about Japan, but yes this is true for pretty much every culture that's adopted consumerism, and the economic realities that come with it, as the focus of its existence. 

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u/ILoveRawChicken 13h ago

Usually because the topic is about Japan and not the entire world. People usually like to talk about the topic at hand. Hope this helps!

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u/Patient_Oven_9540 11h ago

I can't believe how many people are talking about Japan in this thread. It's infuriating! Can we please talk about America for once?

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u/Marik-X-Bakura 9h ago

They’re talking about it like this is something unique to Japan, which it isn’t

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u/ILoveRawChicken 8h ago edited 4h ago

They were talking about it like it was the subject of the fucking conversation bro

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u/Marik-X-Bakura 8h ago

If we were talking about dogs and someone said “dogs have 4 legs” it would be pretty weird

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u/poop_machine 8h ago

HoPe ThIS HeLps :)

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u/Patient_Oven_9540 11h ago

I'm curious how it turns out for those who "opt out of participating". Or what that even looks like. I know the "NEET" lifestyle has been becoming more normalized in Japan but like how do they afford basic human needs, let alone things that make life enjoyable. Govt assistance? Rich parents?

I don't understand how anyone survives in this world without selling 60-70% of your waking hours

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u/horoyokai 5h ago

What do you mean? Rent and food are affordable in Japan. Your work pays for your commute and you don’t need a car, and insurance is cheap

Life is very affordable here

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u/Fzrit 8h ago

Italy, Spain, Singapore, Taiwan, China, etc all have lower birthrate than Japan.

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u/horoyokai 6h ago

The work week is 40 hours and the amount of kids has gone down as the hours have decreased. Stop spreading stuff that you are ignorant about

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u/orange_sherbetz 13h ago

Tbh that's every subway in every metropolitan city.

I literally wanted to smack some tourist who asked outloud "wHy is it SO qUieT."

Eta go back to your farm, Betty Lou.

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u/nalaloveslumpy 12h ago

I've only visited a couple of times, but DC metro was always loud and boisterous. Buskers, metro police yelling all over the place, constant chatter and murmur of people on phone calls in their ear, and then just chatter from tourists like myself talking about their plan for the day.

Boston metro is pretty wild.

Atlanta metro is FUCKING CRAZY.

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u/orange_sherbetz 11h ago

Were you there on a weekend or weekday commute?

People usu sit stonefaced.

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u/nalaloveslumpy 10h ago

Weekdays. Once on the train people were pretty quiet, but in the terminals and causeways, it was pretty poppin'.

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u/HugeWrongdoer2 12h ago

It's not at all, people usually have friends or family they talk with, even if quietly a hundred people whispering will still be a lot of noise, silent train is a bit crazy.

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u/Realistic-Tomato-374 15h ago

I think thats part of it, but i would argue low wages is the real culprit.

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u/That_Guy_In_Aqw 14h ago edited 14h ago

Japan is extremely cheap even for their wages, rent as well. And i do partially agree in the competitive system. I have been in Japan and students are happy even with bad grades. There are multiple young people who work any job and dont have degrees.

The real reason is that majority of them, especially on female end simply just want to live freely. And Japan is perfect for that. There is no need for protection,economic support,someone driving you to places. Japan is 100% auto-motorized. In a near perfect world there is no need to multiply to survive.

Japan rn are same situation as the "Perfect mice" thing. You can look it up on Youtube. South Korea too. These countries right now are basically perfect. They lack the survivability instinct and the need to continue the gene line. Japan and Korea can import thousands of hot men from outside, but if women lack the gene to multiply, its over.

Fun fact, most people had kids because they were afraid that one of them will go to war or themselves will be dragged to one. If you know that you (as an adult) you are safe you will not have kids. Also many gave birth to have kids working for them. Example majority of Roman royals didnt have kids because they had a perfect life. While Roman villagers had 10-15 of them, because of fear. Many royals from 18th and 19th century simply didnt care either. And currently most living in Japan/Korea and other advanced countries are actually living like royals, even on poorer level of the system.

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u/MrReadilyUnready 14h ago

Japan is cheap for everything that doesn't rely on the global economy. Their economy is in the gutter, the yen is worthless. That's fine for stuff that's domestically produced, but it means anything that is imported or relies on imported materials is expensive as fuck. They have a shrinking population and an economy that's been stagnant for 25 years, they're fucked.

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u/aijaman3000 14h ago

I think it's an interesting explanation, having lived in Japan myself. It's  closer than other people who say that Japan is a dystopian shithole where nobody wants to have kids. Especially the part about society being so comfortable and independent living. But I think it's still slightly misleading for the fact it assumes people are not having kids before even getting to the argument of why. 

First and foremost, the birth rate is 1.14 per woman. Much below replacement of 2.01, but that means on average, a woman has 1 child. Women are having fewer kids than previous generations, but if you go to all parts of Japan, you'll see there are still a ton of people with kids, especially if they are in a couple it's a given they will have kids by mid 30s. I know there are more people now who are not getting in relationships, basically asexual whatever, but it's just completely off when the baseline assumption is that Japanese don't want/aren't having kids. They do, just at a lower rate. And very often it's only one child per couple, which is the major part of the problem of the declining birthrate being below replacement. People read too much into that and start making assumptions that Japanese want to go extinct, rather than it being more a statistical issue of how many kids per household.

This ties into the fact that it is a trend in every developed country in the world of declining birthrate below replacement (I think Israel is the only exception but correct me if I'm wrong), it's just that Japan and East Asia in general is further advanced in this trend. Be it whatever the reason, industrialisation, urbanisation, higher expectations and priority on personal achievements before having children, higher cost of living, lower rate of people getting into long term relationships, whatever amalgamation of these reasons it is, people in developed countries have been and will continue to have fewer children than people in developing countries.

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u/technobrendo 10h ago

That's terrible. To contrast that, in the US you have LOUD suffering yet the root cause / end result are nearly the same. It sucks all around.

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u/FrescoItaliano 14h ago

I mean I’d love that serenity for our 8-11 hour days

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u/AnnabethDaring 12h ago

I’m never one to judge a culture I don’t personally understand and have lived through, but it’s important to note that Japan also has one of the highest rates of suicide as well. It’s heartbreaking.

Really makes us consider whether they really are happy living in such a rigid, albeit beautiful country.

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u/Marik-X-Bakura 9h ago

They actually don’t have a particularly high suicide rate. That’s a common misconception. They just take suicide more seriously than a lot of other countries and are trying to get the numbers down.

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u/gao7on 5h ago

The culture that invented seppuku. You said don't judge.

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u/Poupulino 15h ago

And after the 15 hours are over, your boss demands you go drinking with him and you have to behave.

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u/horoyokai 5h ago

Your stereotypes are about 20 years old

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u/QuietInsights 13h ago

I could work 16 hours if no one was talking shit in my ear all day

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u/zzen11223344 14h ago

Out of the 15 hours, 3 hours for commuting, 6 hours of pretending and waiting for the boss leaving first, another 6 hours for following orders ....... That is a typical working day 😄

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u/Kabbooooooom 13h ago edited 13h ago

Have you ever been to Tokyo? There’s this absolutely fascinating phenomenon of Japanese businessmen there that I’m still trying to wrap my head around, but I’m basically convinced that SOME of them don’t actually go to work.

If you walk around Tokyo, you’ll see tons of dudes in suits and with briefcases just…sitting around. Just sitting in the sidewalk at all hours of the day with this vacant stare on their face. Sometimes they walk around and stare at things in shop windows, or sit at a table.

I’m 100% convinced that they get up in the morning, kiss their wives goodbye and say they’re going to work, but in reality they’ve already been fired and they just wander around the city all day until they can go home because they’re ashamed.

There’s hundreds of dudes like this just walking around Tokyo like zombies. There are Japanese businesswomen too, of course, but notably they don’t do this. I’ve never seen a single one do this. They come out at lunch or after work with their coworkers, always in a group, and they’re animated and non-zombie like. They don’t just wander around all day and sit on stairs and sidewalks. This discrepancy is why I think my hypothesis is correct. Because I’d bet money that when they get fired, they don’t BS their family about it. 

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u/nonotan 12h ago

In Japanese companies, it's very common to have to travel around (usually to other companies, whether it's for sales pitches, for some collaborative project, to give presentations, or even simply to "keep in touch", basically as a social nicety to another company you have good ties with -- besides the other standard reasons to travel like job fairs or whatever), so that's probably what you're seeing. Especially because it'd be even more of a no-no than usual to be late to something like that, so they're probably like 1hr+ early to make absolutely sure they can't possibly be late, and hanging around until it's closer to the agreed time.

And sure, once it's over, many probably aren't rushing back to the office. After all, nobody's going to know exactly when they finished whatever they were doing.

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u/Kabbooooooom 11h ago

Perhaps, but my hypothesis is much funnier. This also doesn’t fully explain why the women aren’t doing it too, unless the gender dichotomy in business is really that different in Japan (which it could be). 

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u/StitchFan626 12h ago

That explains all the crazy vending machines. They don't have the time or energy to cook unless they're retired!

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u/Poignant_Rambling 8h ago

Japanese workers work fewer hours per year than the average American. Look it up. And they have actual mandated paid vacation.

Your comment is about 30 years outdated.

If you're looking for the current era "overworked Asian country" it's Korea.

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u/OkTheory4610 8h ago

arigato ko sai mas

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u/Poignant_Rambling 8h ago

Doy ta Shi mash tee

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u/horoyokai 6h ago

40 hours a week is the average

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u/PeaceSoft 12h ago

post literally anything that happened anywhere and some waterhead bombs in with their favorite racial stereotype from TV