Last month, I ranted on about 5 things that I think Japan could import from other countries. One thing that I missed on that list, and this list as well, is a work-life balance. Japan definitely doesn't have anything resembling a work-life balance, and with the recent belt tightening, it has only gotten worse. I've heard stories of a few people taking on the job of two and burning a lot of midnight oil to keep their jobs.

I could probably write an entire blog post about work-life balance (and probably will at some point), so I'm not going to discuss it in too much detail here. Instead, I'd like to give the next 5 things that I'd like to see in Japan:
5. Education reform
Okay so this is a horse that has been beaten bloody way too many times, but as a father of a 3 year old that will soon join the education system, I think it is important to at least mention the state of education in Japan. The problem has multiple facets that need to be addressed in order to really build more efficient system. As a matter of fact this probably another topic I could write a full post on, so I'll just go over the key points here.

First, every public school across the nation follows pretty much the exact same curriculum and exact same books. This would be a good system if the people at the top were perfect and could write accurate and truthful textbook. But, of course no one is perfect, and so I encounter students on a regular basis who are stunned to find out that we pronounce the word 'the' pretty much the same even if it comes before a vowel sound. And why students regular respond to 'How are you doing?' with 'Yes.' The list goes on and on, because the same wrong textbook was used.

Second, is the immense amount of time and energy that goes into shoveling raw facts into kids' heads. This raw information without any critical thinking applied is next to useless in an age of Google and on-demand information. The way things are going, we are already searching for things using voice, and it is not unthinkable that we will have the ability to search for things with our thoughts. With that instant connection to information why is there such a focus on memorization?

Now, knowing facts about the world is important, don't get me wrong. You can't, for example, have an effective discussion on the effects of the cold war on current policy if you are spending half the time looking up facts on Google. But, learning of facts is a lifelong process. And to make use of those facts you need critical thinking.
4. Unique Women Heros
Legally speaking, women have a lot of rights in Japan. There, in theory, are no obstructions to receiving equal pay and equal opportunities in the workplace. However, women still occupy considerably small portion of the leadership workforce. Most of the women working in companies today are forced on to a cleric track that, at best, will allow them to be executive assistants to the president. But, this seems to be a huge misuse of resources to me.

The problem is incredibly difficult to solve due to a lot of entrenched cultural norms. The Economist has an amazing article that captures almost every angle of the problem that I encourage you to give a read if you are more interested in this topic. But, just to summarize, the company culture in Japan is still set to men are the leaders, women are the clerics.

I'll just give you one example. In the States, I worked in sales for a large B2B company. At least half of the sales reps were women; women tend to be good sales people in my opinion. Anyway, I've taught a few corporate lessons to sales staff here in Japan and the entire team is men. In sales, this is a tough problem, because sales staff usually take buyers out to hostess clubs and such, which obviously female staff would have a hard time doing. There are other ways of doing business of course but this is the usual way.

Another problem is that some women simply don't want to work. And to be honest,