Living With Shift Work: Early, Late and Night

In the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's 2025 survey of working conditions, accommodation and food service had the longest scheduled working week of any industry: 40 hours 2 minutes, against an average of 39 hours 24 minutes. It also had the lowest take-up of paid leave. Workers in the industry took 8.0 of the 15.9 days of paid leave they were granted, a rate of 50.7%. Across all industries it was 66.9% (12.1 of 18.1 days). The leave figures cover leave granted during 2024.

Those are averages for hotels and restaurants together. Your hotel may be better or worse. But they explain why shift work is the first thing people worry about, and why it is worth asking about before you say yes.

The three hard parts

The first is rest between shifts. A shift that ends at 22:00 followed by one that starts at 06:00 is exactly the kind of gap this is about. The Ministry has a rest-between-shifts system, called 勤務間インターバル, but for employers it is an effort duty, not a requirement. In the 2025 survey, 6.9% of all companies had introduced it, up from 5.7% in 2024. Among companies with 1,000 or more employees it was 20.1%. Where it existed, the average gap was 10 hours 51 minutes. We could not find a 2025 figure for hotels alone. In the earlier 2023 survey, 2.3% of accommodation and food service companies had it, against 6.0% of all companies.

The second is that your days off are not other people's days off. Weekends, Golden Week, Obon and New Year are busy, so the people who work them get time off on quiet weekdays. That is easy to like and hard to share with friends and family, who are mostly off when you are working.

The third is that days off don't always get taken. The leave figures above are the nearest official measure we have. A hotel that pays for leave on paper but cannot spare you to take it isn't giving you much.

What the Ministry says about sleep

The Ministry's 2023 sleep guide for adults suggests at least six hours of sleep as a guideline, with individual differences, and says that you can't store sleep by sleeping long on a day off. That sounds obvious, but shift workers often plan their week as if they could. This isn't medical advice, and the guide is general. If a pattern leaves you exhausted for weeks, talk to a doctor.

Ordinary practical things that help

These are our suggestions from common sense, not a medical or official recommendation.

Treat the first month as adjustment. Almost everyone finds a new rota hard at the start, and judging yourself on week two isn't fair.

Look at the roster, not just the shifts. When is it published? How far ahead? Can you swap with a colleague? A roster you can plan around makes the same hours easier.

Sort out the commute for the late shift. Check the last train and what you would do if you missed it. A job that needs a taxi every night costs more than it looks.

Tell the people close to you early, and agree which days off you will protect. Everything else bends around that.

Use the first day off after a run of shifts to rest. It's tempting to fill it. Many people regret that.

What to ask before you accept

How to Read a Hotel Job Listing and The Hotel Interview have longer lists. For shift work in particular:

How many night shifts a month, and is there a rest day afterwards?

How much rest is there between the end of one shift and the start of the next? (This is the 勤務間インターバル question.)

When is the roster published, and how are Golden Week, Obon and New Year shared out?

How much paid leave did people actually take last year? A hotel that can answer is a hotel that has thought about it.

What do the night and early-shift allowances come to, separately from base pay?

When it isn't for you

Some people find the pattern suits them. They like quiet weekday mornings, or they prefer working when it is busy. Others never settle into it, and that isn't a weakness. If you know you need a regular weekday schedule, say so early and look at roles with a more fixed pattern, such as some back-office or reservations jobs. We can't promise those exist at every hotel.

Next

Read the listing's shift description closely, set a job alert for roles that fit the pattern you can live with, and ask the questions above at interview. If you are already in a shift-work job and it is wearing you down, the first thing to try is asking your manager about the roster.

Sources: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2025 General Survey on Working Conditions (published 19 December 2025); 2023 survey figures as reported in ministry materials; Healthy Sleep Guide 2023.