A Journey Through Japan’s Work Culture and Natural Escapes

A relentless work ethic and year-on-year tourism surge have now reached a boiling point in Tokyo.

It’s nearly midnight and I’m scarfing down a railway station bento box picked up on the way home from work. It was an extra-long day in my Eikaiwa gakkō, a privately owned English language school geared toward professional women in Ginza. My hours are grueling, particularly now that I’m freelancing for a local magazine before my shift. I work 13-hour days. Last weekend I was on vacation in Taipei and finally got to switch off, but my flight back was delayed, and I stepped into work 15 minutes late, where I was fined $100 on the spot.

My students are high-salaried professionals, but some are housewives of “salarymen” in the area. They join this fancy women-only school where the course material is designed like a fashion magazine, and private classrooms are decked out in pink. The framed photos of pugs on my desk are totally Kawaii. Keiko works in advertising and hurries in at 9 p.m. She missed the last few lessons but tells me she was lucky to get off work early today.

“8 p.m. isn’t early,” I tell her.

“It is when I often finish around midnight,” she insists.

A Work Culture Reaching a Fever Pitch

Things have been like this since Japan began rebuilding after World War II. Sacrificing one’s personal life to service the country was expected, and this united work ethos propelled Japan to become the world’s second economic superpower after the U.S. by the ’80s. Cases of karoshi (translating to “death by overwork”) plagued society for decades, and despite policies introduced to improve work-life balance, relentless office attitudes prevailed. The year after I moved to Japan, an advertising agency was charged over the suicide of a worker who was reported to have logged over 100 hours of overtime per month.

According to Tokyo Reporter, Japan’s fertility crisis of the last half century has been largely attributed to its unyielding work ethic. The Japanese government hopes to implement a four-day workweek in 2025 to help improve work-life balance and create more favorable conditions for having children. Whether that action is widely adopted, or workers treat the bonus day as a day of rest remains to be seen.

I met up with an old friend on a 2024 visit to catch up on where things were post-pandemic. Ryoko was born in Japan, schooled in the U.S., and moved back to Tokyo the same year I did, securing a sought-after role within a tech consultancy in Chiyoda City, thanks to her fluent dual language capabilities.

“For years I was exhausted; exhausted at work, exhausted by the city. Then Covid brought peace for a little while, until borders reopened and then it felt like the whole world came knocking. I stopped going to my local coffee shops where I would know the baristas and owners because there literally was no room,” she recalls. “Things were not the same anymore.”

I thought back to 2017, to the weekends I went drinking with Ryoko, now 33, and her friends. Street parties on Halloween were a huge part of the culture, and we’d hit Shibuya without ever causing trouble, always cleaning up after ourselves. This year, in an attempt to curb bad behavior by inconsiderate visitors joining the festivity, it was canceled. I walked around the famous scramble, plastered with posters that warned against drinking on the street.

The weak yen (currently at a 34-year low against the dollar) has ballooned Japan’s tourism, and Tokyo is now a destination of untenable popularity, as evidenced on Fodor’s 2025 No List. Even the Disney adults of my extended family are coming here to snag bargains. They don’t care about tea rituals—they prefer a Matcha Frappuccino. It used to be us foreigners who’d adapt to Japan, but now it’s the other way around.

“Trying to get to work on time in one of the most densely populated big cities in the world is enough of a stress as it is, but now we have to deal with Westerners lugging giant suitcases onto the carriage at 7 a.m. in the morning,” adds Ryoko, “When the weekend comes, we need to escape the noise pollution of Tokyo. Thankfully, it’s only an hour or two to reach nature by Shinkansen, so I head to Nagano. Not Nagano City.”

Nagano: A Place of Respite

It just so happened that I was heading to one of Nagano prefecture’s small towns, Karuizawa, and true to Ryoko’s word, the bullet train proved supersized and suitcase-free. Instead, luggage compartments were only filled with compact Japanese smart cases small enough to squeeze into an overhead bin.

Karuizawa, population 20,000, was a breath of fresh air compared with the chaos of Tokyo. It’s busiest in two seasons: the summer when Tokyoites retreat to high altitudes for a respite from the brutal summer heat, and the winter ski season. My hotel, Prince Grand Resort Karuizawa, is just an hour from the city, with golf courses, onsens, and even its own ski area. At the base of Mount Asama, you get an epic backdrop. I went without a drop of wine to calm my jittery nerves. Shinrin-yoku (or “forest bathing”) was developed in Japan following scientific studies conducted by the government in the 1980s. Results showed that just two hours of mindful forest exploration reduced blood pressure and lowered cortisol.

Today, Karuizawa is a domestic draw, but it was popularized as a summer spot in the late 19th century by a Scottish-Canadian missionary, Alexander Croft Shaw. He appreciated the cool climate and Zen surroundings and built a holiday retreat, encouraging other foreigners to follow suit, which led to Western-style villas, churches, and hotels. In the coming centuries, these Western-style amenities appealed to the Japanese elite, turning the area into a sort of Hamptons-style getaway for Tokyoites. Even former prime minister Shigenobu Okuma owned a villa in Karuizawa.

1. Karuizawa View2. Karuizawa Hot SpringsSeibu Prince Hotels

Despite Shaw’s investment, Karuizawa has pretty much flown under the radar of Western tourists. Americans make up 5.4% of all Nagano’s foreign inbound travel, and the number for Karuizawa is likely less than half that. Meanwhile, in Kyoto, you’re looking at 34.9%. Karuizawa’s predominately Japanese clientele are a different type of tourists from the rest of the world. They don’t come with giant luggage, they don’t wear shoes in temples, and they certainly don’t walk and eat at the same time (it’s gotten so bad that there are signs all over Kyoto asking visitors to stop). I saw not a single sign of the sort in Karuizawa. Bliss.

With its natural hot springs, breathtaking Alps, and larch forests ideal for Shinrin-yoku, Karuizawa has been the gateway to serenity for Tokyoites for decades, and having seen it first-hand, I can see why. There’s plenty of room to be at one, and everyone is incredibly considerate. As a non-Japanese traveling party, we understood that to be welcome means to respect the town, its cultures and traditions, and most of all, to leave our big suitcases at home.