Comments on: Summertime Blues for Civil Servants

By: Plan de viaje « Jamón en Japón

Plan de viaje « Jamón en Japón — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 22:47:32 +0000

[...] Y digo nosecuantas porque he intentado calcularlas, pero entre el desfase horario y que Japón no tiene horario de verano, pues me he rendido un poco. Si el billete no miente a las 9:40 debería estar en suelo [...]

By: Ao

Ao — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 21:03:14 +0000

Drinking when it’s light outside is one of the best parts of summer. Just ask anyone in the northern climes. One of my best memories of a summer trip to Canada was drinking outside at 12:30 A.M. and still being able to see the end of the sunset. I can just imagine how much more blissful that would be on top of a beer garden.

By: umiotoko

umiotoko — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 20:41:19 +0000

DST will never work in Japan. Although things are changing slowly, salarymen are still expected to stay after work and go drinking. And drinking in Japan can’t be done when it’s light outside, so implementing DST would bankrupt the bars, and drive the divorce rate up as all those sober salarymen went home and acted like a “wet leaf” at home.

By: Soteiguy

Soteiguy — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 12:01:15 +0000

the more I think about this issue the more I think the people who are protesting against it have their heads in the sand. Have you heard some of their arguments (you get heaps if you do a simple google search for summer time (easier to click here than type it yourself or you might end up searching for fish)).
The most common argument seems to be that people will continue to hold their meetings late at night so you can’t go home early - do none of them realise that you actually change the time on the clock and so people don’t realise that they are going home an hour early? Would some of these people go to america or somewhere that uses it and experience it before the complain!!??

By: jcp

jcp — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 17:07:49 +0000

This article has some interesting information and provides some insight into japanese work culture, but I am afraid that it dismisses the most obvious explanations. Most of the population in Japan is actually pretty southern when compared to USA or Europe. Tokyo is about the same latitude as Memphis TN, or Gibraltar and sees considerably smaller seasonal change in length of daylight than New York or London.

Also note the agricultural regions typically do not prefer DST time-shifts since animals use the sun and not clocks to regulate behavior. Full time farmers work when conditions are best and not by a schedule, and part time farmers probably appreciate the early sunrise in order to do some work before going to their day jobs. Japan’s strong farm lobby may also have played a role in avoiding summer-time.

But again, this was an interesting article in that it brought up a topic that most people wouldn’t think twice about.

By: Yellow

Yellow — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 09:24:13 +0000

Two weeks after summer solstice, and in Osaka dawn was 04:09AM, dusk was 07:41PM. It would have been even earlier in Tokyo.

What is the point of having three to four hours of sunlight before you even wake up? It’s just baking the roof and making the aircon work overtime (in Japan the aircons have to do サービス残業 as well.)

By: Richmond

Richmond — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 02:08:49 +0000

what’s the story with the ホワイトカラーエグゼンプション?

By: Hills-zoku

Hills-zoku — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 01:14:29 +0000

yeah good point Daniel. Bone, why exactly does DST save us money?
Does anyone know someone working for the Keidanren. I was about to take the mickey out of them until I realised that I do the same thing - I decided to come to work early so I could go home early. I still come to work at about 7:30AM in the morning but I don’t think I’ve gone home before anyone else more than about twice in the last year. Something wrong there… Let’s be honest though, it’s not really DST unless the TV programs all start an hour earlier, right!

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 17:44:23 +0000

Especially in Tokyo (and the rest of eastern Japan, I imagine), it’s quite ridiculous how early the sun rises. If I remember correctly, it starts getting light out a little after 4am (!) in the summer. It’s definitely a strange feeling when, wandering around after all-night boozing in Shibuya, the sky begins to go from black to blue and the trains aren’t even running yet. (Ahh, nostalgia).

That said, I doubt DST in Japan would save energy, considering it would lengthen the aircon’ed hours of the day (which I’m guessing exceeds energy consumption as a result of lighting).

By: Ao

Ao — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 17:06:08 +0000

I’m surprised that Japan hasn’t jumped on the DST bandwagon, with all the talk about cool biz, cool Earth 50, etc. since it does save a certain amount of energy.

That extra hour of sunlight would indeed be a cruel joke to salarymen stuck watching 8:00 sunsets from the window of their skyscraper office buildings. But not everyone in Japan is a white collar worker so I think that most people would benefit from DST.

Looking at the distribution map, though, gives me a good clue as to why they haven’t adopted it yet. With the exception of Russia none of Japan’s neighbors are currently using DST, so Japan probably doesn’t want to be the odd one out.