I work with a guy who took it for three months without having worked a day at the place besides orientation. The company knew about his situation prior to hiring him and were totally fine with it - they even arranged gifts etc. The place I work is Japanese but takes a lot of pride in shunning the work culture commonly associated with Japan.
I love reading these kind of stories about Japanese companies. I hope there are more and more of these as the current work culture over there is pretty depressing to me.
