<i>Labor protection is much, much stronger in Japan than the US, or many other first-world nations, for that matter. </i><p>It's not that simple. Although permanent employees can't be fired easily, dispatched workers and temps are a significant (and growing) proportion of the workforce and may be fired at will.<p>We don't have long vacations like in some European countries, nor do we have "sick days" (lots of national holidays, though).<p>Some companies put a cap on overtime pay (not on overtime work), some smaller ones don't pay it at all. And so on.<p>You're right about the law being on the worker's side. Most people won't sue, though.<p><i>As for self-employment I can't imagine it's much harder,</i><p>I think it's not hard bureaucracy-wise, except for potential visa problems. I wonder how Patrick will deal with that (I once had an offer to work as contractor but had to reject in part because of visa headaches).<p>Many translators are self-employed. But I don't know anyone working in IT that is self-employed, probably because most Japanese companies don't like to hire individual IT contractors. Or maybe my sample is too small.