Work meetings in Japan

Japan's work culture is known for long and pointless meetings.

But is it true? I have never worked in a company where I would sit in meetings all day long, but the meetings I was in were usually not of the most productive nature.

Weekly meetings

A company I used to work for would do weekly meetings for the whole company, where news and current topics would be shared. It was mostly someone presenting and the other employees listening. There was not really much of a discussion going on. Personally, I think an e-mail informing everyone about the news, changes in procedures, etc. would have been sufficient.

At this company, we would also do “lunch meetings” in the meeting room when a new employee joined the company to welcome them. It was nice that the company would buy lunch for everyone, but personally, when I have to be in a small open plan office with many colleagues all day, I prefer to spend my lunch break in solitude listening to podcasts or watching Netflix. I don’t mind them doing welcome after-work parties for new employees because then I have the option of not going, but please don’t take away my lunch break.

Morning meetings

At the company I worked for when I just came to Japan, we would do morning meetings. These were quite short, but also quite pointless. Everyone in the department would say what they were planning to do on that day. As these would be held first thing in the morning, I usually would have no idea because I had not had the chance to check my e-mail yet. I guess people were expected to arrive a few minutes early so they could check their e-mail prior to the meeting, but I was just an intern so I didn't really care that much.

Also, why would you need to know what your colleagues are doing today? If their work is related directly to my work, we can just talk about that in the group of people that are involved. Otherwise, I don’t care.

From what I have heard from my husband. He also is in meetings that are not related to his work a lot. He has meetings several times per day and most of the time he tells me that he doesn’t understand what they talked about because the topic is very specific and not related to his tasks.

Currently, they are all Zoom meetings so he can do other tasks while listening but I wonder how he got his work done when he still worked at the office.

Luckily at my current workplace I only have a department meeting once a month and it usually only lasts for about 2 hours. All other communication works quite nicely via e-mail or chat. Are you in unproductive meetings a lot?