I didn’t want to tell her, or anyone else, what I feared – that I was on the edge of a major breakdown. Many Japanese businessmen die each year from karoushi, a disease, if I can call it that, which translates literally as ‘excessive work death.’ There’s usually no warning – like a horse that’s run to death, they just collapse at their desk, or fail to wake up one day. It’s one of the many stress related problems in Japan, where the rate of teenage suicide is the highest in the world. The pressure from exams becomes overwhelming or they fail to get into a good university, so they make the pilgrimage to a mountain and jump off. More recently, the news is of young people – both students and workers – that shut down and refuse all social contact, even with their own family. They won’t even go to the bathroom or open the bedroom door to collect the food tray until they’re certain that the rest of the family isn’t nearby.