Otsukaresama deshita. Osaki ni shitsurei shimasu. Thank you for your hard work. Excuse me for leaving before you. A manners column on All About calls this the standard, safe phrase for leaving work before others. It suggests also asking whether there is anything to help with.
In the tea ceremony, guests also say osaki ni, before you, and dōzo, please go ahead, to one another before drinking.
At a Japanese drinking party, the glasses are filled first. Everyone waits until each person has a drink. Then someone leads the toast, kanpai, and only then does anyone begin to drink.
At many Japanese elementary schools, children walk to school in a group, shūdan tōkō. The city of Kumamoto explains that the group is usually led by a hanchō, a group leader in the fifth or sixth grade.
The city’s advice to families is to leave home early. A child who is late at the meeting place may be left behind.
In the public schools of the city of Minoh, near Osaka, school lunch, kyūshoku, is eaten in the classroom. The pupils on lunch duty carry the food in and serve it. When everything is ready, everyone sits down, and the meal begins with itadakimasu.
When they have finished, the pupils say gochisōsama deshita to give thanks, and then clear their dishes in turn.
In 2018, Business Insider Japan surveyed 488 young employees about overtime. One respondent wrote: Teiji wa 5-ji han da ga, teiji ni kaeru mono nado inai tame hayaku kaerizurai. The working day ends at 5:30, but nobody goes home at 5:30, so it is hard to leave early.
Another wrote that the idea has spread that one should stay at work while others are too busy to go home, even when there is nothing to help with.
Before a company’s cherry blossom party, the hanami, someone must hold a good place under the trees. The job, basho-tori, usually goes to new employees, who often organize the party. A guide says they start early in the morning of the day, or the night before. New employees waiting on a blue tarp were a common sight in the Shōwa era.
A lawyer quoted by the legal news site Bengo4.com notes that where taking part is in effect compulsory, the time spent holding the spot must be counted as working time.
In a sumo stable, the wrestlers eat chanko, the stable’s stew, around a low table, a few at a time, in order of rank. The highest-ranked eat first. The lower-ranked wrestlers serve the meal.
From October to November 2010, the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training surveyed regular employees aged 20 to 59 about taking paid leave. It received 2,071 valid answers and published the results in April 2011.
Among the reasons for holding back from taking leave, 60.2 percent agreed with Yasumu to shokuba no hoka no hito ni meiwaku ni naru kara. Taking time off would cause trouble for others at work.
Sābisu zangyō, service overtime, is overtime work that is not paid. In a survey reported in 2015 by Rengo, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation, about 40 percent of workers said that they had been in a situation where they had to do it. The average was 16.7 hours a month.
Tsukiai zangyō, keeping-company overtime, means staying at work after one’s own tasks are done, to match colleagues or the boss. In a survey by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 12.8 percent named ending it, with bosses sending staff home early, as a measure needed to reduce overtime.