The 'no downtime' thing really rings true with me .. during my personal time working in Japan I found I'd become accustomed to the fact that it was just 'normal' to be going into the office after a few beers and working another shift .. to the point where, when I returned to California, it was really bizaare to me that, after 6pm, pretty much everyone went home and - except for a few hardcore hackers - life just seeped out of the office space(s) we called a workplace. I guess the different physical characteristics of the two locations has a lot to do with it, not to mention culture - back home (at the time) in California it was not at all weird to be spending up to two hours on the commute, just sitting on the freeways in ones car, completely alone tuned into whatever bland offerings the radio waves proferred, while in Japan I don't think I had a car-ride longer than 30 minutes the whole time I was there (airport lift) .. and there is something to be said for the vital 'energy' that imbues a place like Tokyo at 9pm in the evening on a Tuesday, where most of the world is still at work. Albeit drunk, at least in a good mood, but nevertheless: still working. I got used to heading out at 10pm on any workday and feeling really
alive out there in the walking streets, like there wasn't a "shutdown" period before 12am.
The takeaway of this article to me is that, to be truly successful in the International markets of the new electronic economies, one really does have to disavow oneself of cultural baggage. I think I get better at that as the years go by - but I can't, nevertheless, help to feel very sorry for my old California associates who I know, even now today twenty years later, still spend a really inordinate amount of time on the freeway. Oh, how impersonal that life was ..