Pros
Local people are nice, some Japanese expats are polite but not all.
Cons
HR policies are not aligned or standardised, each office or plant writes their own HR policies. Performance appraisal has different type of standard in a different office within the same country. With the outdated and reducing employee entitlement and benefits over the years, nobody has control or a chance to voice out their disappointments. Typical Japanese corporate culture, there's no room for career advancement unless you are Japanese and contributed in the business for many years, 15 - 25 years is very common. Annual salary increment is not able to cover the annual inflation. HR fully depend on recruitment firm for hiring and usually depend on one or two recruitment firm. Employee turnover is extremely high, people come and go, HR still couldn't find out the real reason why employee chooses to go, there's no proper analyse on exit interviews, HR never think of a way to motivate the employees but only come to work in time and leave office in time, same like most of the employees.