# Japanese 30-hour system for night owl goals?

**URL:** <https://forum.beeminder.com/t/japanese-30-hour-system-for-night-owl-goals/12758>\
**Category:** Bugabee\
**Created:** [April 18, 2026, 3:14pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/japanese-30-hour-system-for-night-owl-goals/12758 "2026-04-18T15:14:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![byorgey](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/byorgey/32/70_2.png) [@byorgey](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/byorgey)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2026, 3:14pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/japanese-30-hour-system-for-night-owl-goals/12758/1 "2026-04-18T15:14:59Z")

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There is a lot of confusion/complication around night owl vs early morning goals, and the current system is definitely a compromise that doesn’t work in every situation.

I recently learned about the Japanese 30-hour system, whereby times after midnight but still logically belonging to the previous day are assigned numeric times greater than 24. For example, a subway line which runs from 5am until 2am the next morning might have its hours listed as 0500-2600. Could it be helpful to specify Beeminder goal deadlines in such a fashion? It might be a neat and tidy way to distinguish between early morning and night owl deadlines that didn’t involve an arbitrary cutoff (although I realize there might still be other, internal/backend reasons for needing such a cutoff).

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**Author:** ![clivemeister](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/clivemeister/32/2034_2.png) [@clivemeister](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/clivemeister)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 6:59am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/japanese-30-hour-system-for-night-owl-goals/12758/2 "2026-04-20T06:59:51Z")

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I rather love this! Might not be obvious the first time you see it, but it would after that, and it makes explaining night owl deadlines a lot easier.

Could it be generalised to early deadlines? If my deadline is 2pm, then maybe 3pm would be -9 the next day?? That seems more confusing/less helpful, so is there a better answer for that?