Japanese Sleeping Habits

As revealed by a 2016 survey of OECD member nations, the average Japanese citizen sleeps less each night than people in most other economically developed nations. However, there are grounds for thinking that a lot of these sleep-derived people make up for lost ground in the daytime. Board any train in Japan, and there's a good chance that at least one or two people in the same carriage will be fast asleep. In fact, it's not especially unusual to see most of an entire row of seven or eight people in a carriage asleep or nodding off ("rowing the boat" is the phrase used in Japanese for the way the upper body jerks back from time to time as slumber descends).