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The movie Office Space and cartoon Dilbert conjure up images of cubicle Hell in America.  When it comes to Japan and their offices, it's quite the contrary.  Spaces are mostly open, people are packed row by row, and there's almost no privacy.  The only person who gets full privacy are the corporate heads and maybe directors.

In theory, this line-by-line format should facilitate communication.  Quite the contrary as people (as I feel) seem to show less responsiveness to open communication since everyone is jammed packed and every conversation can be monitored.  As a result, the peer pressure induces a coma-like response to any non-business related topics.

One noticeable side effect of this lack of privacy is that your coworkers can easily spot what you're doing, what time you come in, how long you go out for lunch and whom you communicate with in the office.  At my office, for instance, this creates rumors floating about as people speculate about which person is sleeping with each other.  Rather than a parody of Office Space, you're more apt to see an instance of Melrose Place in a Japanese office.

Another side effect is that through eliminating people's privacy, this layout system also produces pressure for people to stay late.  You're expected to say something along the lines of, "Excuse me for leaving early" if you head out before your coworkers.  In some of the worst case scenarios, some offices even prevent lower employees from leaving early until the section chief has gone.

As like almost everything in Japan, offices are jammed packed.  Winters are truly brutal out here because of the flu season.  Rather than taking the appropriate time off, people work late hours, hacking away and spreading their germs to their coworkers in the often poorly circulated tiny spaces they share.

When I had previously worked at Ticketmaster, one side of our engineering area would fit up to 20-30 people comfortably.  The structure of the floor was that people had the nice L-shaped desks.  In my current office, I'd say that the total floor space alone would take up 2/3rds at most of what we had at Ticketmaster.  Worse yet, that 2/3rds currently has a little over 50 people with the potential for adding another 10 (and maybe more).

Summers are dead awful in Japan.  If you're really unlucky, you'll be forced to wear a full suit and tie in the incredibly humid atmosphere (especially if you work in the sales section).  Really cheap companies don't even bother turning on the air conditioning.

Another aspect that I truly despise in a Japanese office is that it's so dry.   Meaning that there's just nothing inside that differentiates itself from other companies.  The furniture, decor, tables, chairs, etc. are pretty minimalistic to allow people to survive.  For some big companies, people may get a cafeteria.  Smaller companies aren't so fortunate and people end up scraping for food at local teishoku shops, curry houses, ramen stores, or the nightmarish convenience stores.   Your company might even have a coffee maker.

Some of the larger companies may provide some better equipment.  Securities firms certainly give their employees acceptable desks, computers, monitors and whatnot.  But those companies have money to splurge.  I find that most Japanese companies are extremely cost conscious, overhire, ask for things they can't deliver upon, enslave their employees for long hours and then still not have enough for halfway decent equipment.

Combine all these factors and you have a product that simply sucks the life out of a person.  After checking out this link about offices (mostly in the US), I realized how lucky most places are compared to Japan.