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When the electronics firm Omron told plant manager Junichi Yoshikawa, 43, that he had to take a three-month sabbatical, he set up a vacation schedule with the same thoroughness that he shows at the office. He decided to travel overseas (to San Francisco and Los Angeles), practice golf and start his own consulting and sales firm in Japan -- and tackled each task with determination. "After two months off, I felt different," Yoshikawa recalls. "I felt that I could be more creative and break away from reality."
Japan has experts who advise novice vacationers: the National Recreation Association of Japan offers classes to train such "leisure counselors." About 1,200 would-be advisers are currently studying ways to overcome barriers to leisure, including lack of time, money or traveling companions. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry encourages corporations to have full-time advisers to help employees plan their free time for maximum benefit.
& Older Japanese need all the help they can get to break their stubborn devotion to work, a legacy of the postwar struggle to rebuild the economy. For younger people, untouched by those hard times, taking time off is easier. Yoshiko Murata, 23, who works in public affairs at Toyota, last year took four vacation trips, two each to Europe and Hawaii. Last May she went to Bali and loved it. "My friends and I were reluctant to leave," recalls Murata, "but we said, 'Let's work hard so we can come back again.' " Her boss, Kimiaki Kuroki, 42, has taken only two days off so far this year. Says he, despondently: "Now I'm finally down to 58 days of vacation time left." In the new Japanese way of looking at things, Kuroki has some serious relaxing to do.