It's gotta be rough, overworking one's entire life, losing touch with one's own family by being constantly ABSENT, overworking so badly that there's no room for hobbies, only to retire and have NO relationship with family, and NOTHING to do with one's time.
I'm a gaijin salaryman. :'(
You're in Japan?
Nope, but in spirit I apparently am.
At the risk of pedantry, if you're in your own country, you're not "gaijin," a fact I once pointed out with a surprising lack of venom to a Japanese barber in Honolulu. While you can be a salaryman/sarariman, with ludicrous work hours (or you could be a workaholic), the excess of the work environment in Japan is really endemic.
My last company here, everyone worked 11 hour days everyday, and 16~18 hours, 7 days a week during crunch. They did this without overtime or comp days, no possibility of using their PTO up, and knowing they'd not get paid out their remaining PTO if they quit. I know a half dozen people from that time who had nervous breakdowns, a couple came close to
karoushi. The fact that the Japanese have a word for "working one's self to death" implies to me that the system here is fundamentally different and broken.
None of which is meant to demean your schedule in the least.
