Work-a-holics

It is Saturday afternoon. It is raining. Yet the street echoes with the sounds of hammers. The builders in question started work on the new house on Monday, yet the house is over half finished.

One of the things I was very surprised about when I came to Japan was how hard-working the builders are. Now, I come from a country where a builder's day starts at 9.30am, stops at 11am for a two hour lunch break, and then finishes at 3pm. Assuming the weather is sunny; if it is rainy or even cloudy, then the weather is too bad and the builders refuse to work. Houses typically take four months to be built. But here in Japan a builder's day starts at 7am, stops at 12pm for a one hour lunch break, and finishes at 6pm. Six days a week, or seven if the building is behind schedule. And they will work in rain or shine, hail storm or typhoon. Houses here usually go up in a couple of weeks.