Well, while everyone is laughing at the, to our eyes, strange work practices of the Japanese I might also point out the "ordinary" work practices of a few companies who operate in the English-speaking world.
The last company I worked for fired me, such that my last day of work was 5th of May (making the following day, my 30th birthday, in hexadecimal, very special).
The back-story to this was that in June 2008 I was asked, on a Friday, whether I'd be able to go interstate to help with a major problem, starting the following Monday. I did that. I fixed the problem and helped bring in two major projects which had been in serious trouble, staying away from home for more than nine months. Problems solved, projects delivered, I returned to Sydney. At which point I was promptly fired.
The day I was told I was being fired, I snapped this shot (very badly, I'm the first to admit) of a display the company had for customers to view when they visited head office:
What did I notice about the workplace of the future? It has no people in it.
Just by the way, the Japanese think we anglos have some seriously weird work practices. I'm not at all sure they're wrong.
...Mike
(Full disclosure: I've worked in Japan, albeit briefly, and do think the Japanese can be pretty weird. I've also worked with many Japanese, Indian, Chinese and lots of other non-anglo type people, often but not always in their own countries. They pretty much have some, to our eyes, thoroughly weird work practices. They've almost universallly thought that we anglo types are at least as weird as them, if not more so. My conclusion is that they are right. Especially the "more so" part.)