The company I worked for in Japan (enormous engineering company) gave us a 6 month training period before sending us to our assigned departments (I was sent to their research lab arm). Training continued periodically afterwards with these short 2-3 day boot camp sort of things that you could go to, with the agreement of your boss.

That being said, at least in my case, all this training was meant to bring new grads who were clueless in certain areas (ex: in corporate etiquette) up to a basic standard. It wasn't meant to make you excel at anything.

Just speaking from my own observations here, I don't think this is unheard of in the US. For example I work for Amazon and we hire a lot of college graduates, usually after completing a paid internship. These new hires are not expected to come in with any experience outside of their university work.

From what I can tell, all the other big players do the same.

I think they're talking about something at another level of scale and formality. I worked for Amazon too, but the "training" was more "toss you into the deep end and help as needed".

Don't get me wrong, I think trial by fire is largely a fine way of training, but it is very different.

Google has an actual, formalized Noogler course that you take when you first get there. This is closer to the model of training that exists at the large Asian megacorps - but think formalized, time-off, dedicated training courses rather than the ad hoc "tap your team lead on the shoulder when you need help" model of the modern American tech industry.

Siemens now has an apprenticeship system, and I think that is similar to the mentality that the Japanese companies traditionally have had. That being said, it is a German company, and I do sincerely think that the Germans and Japanese have quite a few similarities when it comes to the way they work, the focus on quality, etc.

Same - I'm at a large employer, 4 month grad training- 2 months general tech, 1 month semi company specific + a couple of group projects.

If you plan to keep them for life, training them does make plenty sense.

Of course lifetime employment no longer makes any sense.

Your definition of "training" and the "training"[1] new Japanese employees receive are almost certainly WILDLY different.

[1] e.g. "Exchanging business cards 101"