The truth is, majority of worker stay very long hours in the office, because leaving on-time gives you the notion that you are not getting enough work; hence you would be treated as you are slacking off.

Also, there's often unspoken rules, for example, someone leaving earlier than their boss being rude.

When they were in growth (back prior to 1980) where lifetime employment and salary increase by age were common, there was at least some incentive to put up with that, but they are now gone as the thing in the past, they are just getting the short end of the stick, as losing your current job might mean that there aren't any other jobs. (Getting hired in Japan outside of new hire -- that's something other than right after graduating, can be very tough.)

Now, having said that, of course, there are people out there who have more liberty in deciding how much they should work each day, and doing it as their choice, but considering this being nationwide issue, I wouldn't think that's a majority.

Note: If you are someone from outside of Japan, you will get some perk as a foreigner, that you are not expected to go along with the above. Merely appearing like the Japanese would lock me into same expectation as Japanese. (Which I envy "foreigners" every time I visit Japan, as my mindset is as foreign from Japanese.) Japanese people usually don't really discriminate foreigners, but they do have different social expectations. (Just you never can be "one of them.")

Maybe a daily walk in a park and/or 30 minutes of meditation could be better for their health than spending 12 hours in the office with a break of having a few beers each day. Seems like you're posing a false dilemma between spending the full day in the office and having a two hour commute each day - it's possible to choose neither of those. Are you sure your colleagues are so happy about their situation?

I did the whole 12-16 hr work day for nearly half a decade out of school, including the weekend. I even skipped out on vacation for 3 years. I really enjoyed what I was doing.

Having lived that life style, it doesn't leave you with much free time. Dinner with kids and spouse? Exercise? Cooking? Errands? Creative hobbies? 7-8 hours sleep / night?

My commute last for 30 minutes on a bicycle, I would like everyone to have the option to leave at a reasonable hour to live their life. If they want to continue working, that's cool too. But the impression I get from the Japanese culture is that it isn't so free to do so. It is 'expected'. I heard that Japanese employees don't leave until their boss leaves, which could be an ungodly hour. Having lived the extreme, my personal opinion is that balance is best.

> sitting in traffic for hours

Have you bothered to actually look at the statistics? Americans have some of the shortest commute times in the OECD, while the Japanese have some of the longest: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/world-of-commut...

> being very un-social

This is entirely subjective, but I've found that Americans are much more sociable, particularly with strangers, than the Japanese (or most Europeans) are.

> breathing in smog

Again, have you looked at the statistics? According to recent OECD data, America is less polluted than Japan: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/environment/

How in the world do you interpret "see their families" as "private time on the road"? This isn't a commuting fetish. It's the idea that there is lots of life — most of it, in fact — to enjoy outside the office. If you really enjoy hanging out with your colleagues, you could do it outside of work. But if you have other friends or family members you'd like to see, you can't do that at work, and it wouldn't be very high-quality time anyway if you're working.