The typical Japanese businessman

My male co-worker, who we will call Mr. Guchi, often - and endlessly - complains that he is exhausted from 'overtime'. Hearing this, I often am tempted to ask where he is doing this 'overtime', since he usually leaves the office before I do.

In Japanese there is the word 'zangyou' which when translated into English comes out as 'overtime'. However, I wonder if the word 'zangyou' should actually have two separate translations into English, 'overtime' being one and 'aftertime' being the other since in Japanese 'zangyou' has two quite separate meanings - one being equivalent to the English 'overtime', and the other means simply having gone out with co-workers or clients until all hours of the night. This activity I refer to as 'aftertime'.

Based on information gained from Mr. Guchi, 'aftertime' has an almost set pattern: first eating at an inexpensive and incredibly noisy 'izakaya', where the alcohol is more nutritious than the food, drunk on cheap Japanese wine everyone moves to a bar, even drunker on a pricier pint everyone hits the karaoke club, and once the alcohol begins to wane and stomachs begin to turn, participants finish off with a bowl of ramen (Chinese-style noodles in a spicy and salty broth topped with pork, deep fried vegetables, green onions and etc.).

Considering that Mr. Guchi lives about 45 minutes from his company and that all of this activity probably went on well after the last train, this "aftertime-doer" probably returns home at around three in the morning by taxi, only to have to wake up four hours later in order to make it into the office by nine. Believe me, the next day, it is very easy to tell if Mr. Guchi chose an extra thirty minutes sleep over a hot shower – garlic is "add-as-you-like"' in late night ramen stands.

This winter, an employee from the U.S. subsidiary visited to our office. After greeting Mr. Guchi and listening to his complaints of fatigue due to overtime, the American said to me "regardless of the fact that everyone of the Japanese employees log at least ten hours of overtime per week, the achievement results are just as high in the U.S., where not one of us in my division has worked even an hour of overtime in this past year".

If all 'zangyou' was overtime, the above statement could not be factual. But, if one were to consider that more often than not 'zangyou' is 'aftertime' then it would be easy to imagine that lack of sleep and a hangover would affect achievement results during regular work hours, which, when and if necessary, may lead into some actual overtime.

I wonder, is it 'overtime' that is killing off Japanese business men or 'aftertime'?