This sounds bad enough that it makes me wonder what the punishment for breaking the rules in jail is. If you can't sleep in a certain direction, what are they going to do if you refuse to obey? Or even can't obey because you don't speak Japanese?

Well, the not sleeping thing is easy: they can simply scream at you, on end, for as long as they want. You're not going to get much sleep that way.

Breaking rules in US prisons leads to solitary confinement. I'm assuming there's something similar in Japanese prisons, although the conditions sound like they can't get much worse...

I can't logically think of any other lawfully worse punishment than what was described in the article. I don't know what they'd do for breaking rules in these situations, to be honest.

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