Traditional Japanese seal system hampers telework for some japantoday.com

A reliance on paper filing systems in parts of Japan's business world is forcing employees to go into work to put their unique seal on documents.
To do this they use tiny traditional stamps known as hanko or inkan -- tools that date back centuries, but are still popular nationwide.
"I need to physically be in the office because I need to submit paper documents and stamp them," Mizuho, who works at an IT firm in Tokyo, told AFP.
Although the number of companies that digitise documents is increasing, more of them should follow suit and introduce web conferences to allow telework, he said.
"Japanese are hard workers, so unless we're forced to not go to work, it's going to be difficult to avoid 80 percent of contact."