@cheesenoodle
Yeah. Unpaid work sucks. Not limited to Japan though. I think the real problem with the overworking in Japan is partly the "transportation". Some people have to travel from A-> B at ungodly hours in the morning, work, eat, and by the time they reach home its ridiculously late at night.
Then they sleep and repeat until weekends where they are forced to do other things like laundry. if their salary isn't particularly great, they have to add cooking to the list of things they need to do.
These all fall under obligation/compulsory things. The final killer is that as completely sane and normal humans, we all love doing non-obligatory things like going out with friends, watching movies, playing games... (There are sports as well but looking at their city... There aren't that many places for casual physical relaxation unless you count mofu-ing cats in cat cafes as one)
Life would be so much easier if people stop getting jobs 3 cities away. Though I doubt they had much of a choice.
[On an unrelated note, my parents saw the "exorbitant prices" where we pay for "walking someone else's dog for several hours" and said they were crazy 😅