RochelleKopp

Service sector (restaurants and retail) tend to have very long hours and a lot of the reports of "black" (abusive) companies come from this sector. Blue collar workers often do unpaid overtime (e.g. for quality circles) and do a lot of after hours socializing t oo.

I believe that the Japanese authorities are indeed very wary of what would happen if more immigrants were brought in. Also many Japanese citizens are not particularly open to the idea. However as you point out, it's probably inevitable. In order to make it work, there would need to be more programs designed at helping immigrants learn Japanese and the Japanese culture, and helping Japanese be more comfortable with different people among them.

Typical cultural differences include: Japanese tend to be fairly indirect. They are very risk-averse. They are rather hierarchical. They are very process-oriented. They tend to be less wordy / more non-verbal than most other cultures. Hmm, surprising ones. My mind is drawing a blank. Almost nothing surprises me at this point!

Perks and benefits. The usual insurance stuff, commuting expenses, at bigger companies access to holiday facilities.

As for the cleaning, I did see this kind of thing in the Japanese company I worked with but it was mostly the women who took care of it.