1. First, who are you? What are your dreams and why the interest in Japan?
My name is Alice Odoux. I am a French girl of 24 years. Since highschool I was curious about the culture and history of Japan. I read books, watched movies and became more and more interested about the country. Many of my choices after high school were about Japan. Which business school had an exchange program with Japan? Which afterschool classes should I take to have higher chances? The business school I chose had 3 open positions every year to go study at their partner school in Osaka. So I made sure to be a top student to be one of the first one to choose my destination. I didn’t want to leave any chance to doubt. Thanks to that, I spent one year in Osaka in 2010/2011 as an exchange student. Student’s life is very different from worker’s life, I was aware of that and that is why I decided to do my university’s mandatory 6 months internship in Japan as well.
2. Tell us about the planning and process.
Finding an internship in Japan is really difficult, especially if you don’t know the language. First I tried to find some international companies on the internet and sent them my CV but that didn’t really work. The second step was to contact a lot of people directly on LinkedIn. I connected with them and asked directly about internships in Japan. Networking is always useful, even if the timing was not good that time. I joined a couple of groups on LinkedIn and one of them was Internship Japan. On the wall, Verena started a really useful introduction page, where every member could quickly introduce themself and their purpose in the group. One of the person was Terrie Lloyd, who I saw on other Japan related groups too. He was welcoming any approach about internship. I connected to him on LinkedIn. After a few exchanges, I explained to him what I was looking for. That was the perfect timing since he was looking for new interns for an internship program for Japan Tourist (now Japan Travel) (www.japantravel.com). He sent me the description of the internship but it was a bit different from what I was looking for, more focused on traveling around Japan, writing articles and so on. So I explained to him I was more marketing and management-oriented. Thanks to my previous experiences, he proposed to me to be in charge of the program itself.
3. Tell us about the internship.
What did you do? I worked in Roppongi, Tokyo, most of the times in the office. I was in charge of the internship project in Japan, handling around 33 people between 20 and 30 years of age, with various nationalities and experience. I had to manage them; plan their routes, their tickets, follow-up on their assignments, sometimes talk to the families, manage reimbursements, schedules, check their articles. I met all of the interns and also went out to meet some partners, e.g. hotel owners and regional partners. The project went quite well so they decided to continue it the year after and I had to take care of the new advertisement, communication and part of the recruitment. Before I had to leave I had to train the people taking over my position too.
4. Did you have any chance to study Japanese while in Japan or before coming?
I was doing extra Japanese classes in my business school before coming here, not just to start with the language but also to make sure I was on top of the class for the exchange year. Then I studied Japanese when I was in Osaka. The working language during my internship was English though.
5. You’re back in Japan with a full-time job now. Congratulations! Tell me more about that please.
Having a six month working experience in Japan really helped my profile when I was applying for jobs in Japan after I graduated. It was a plus from the “normal” one year exchange student experience that many people have, so the employers were keener to understand my motivation. After being an exchange student basically everyone wants to go back to that place to continue this other life where you experienced a total new environment, new friends, good memories, crazy parties, etc. But it’s always different from real active life. So doing the six months internship showed my possible employers that I was aware of that and I was ready for a working life. This internship was a good transition from student to active life, not just professionally but also for me personally. Thanks to the internship, the “shock” to a start a new working life in Japan wasn’t so big. Most of all, it helps you to realize what responsibility really is.
6. How can we as Internship Japan do better? So give us your advice please.
Back then there were almost no internship offers in Japan, on LinkedIn or internet. I would have wished for more partners and possible internships. It would also be good for you to continue good relations and keep in touch with the people who approached you and maybe even got an internship through you. Same for the companies. You can offer them to assist with future interns too. At that time, I was not trying to find the solution all done and ready for me. I know that never really works. I was looking for some orientation, who to talk to, since I had almost no network in Japan. The group was the orientation I was looking for!
Katharina studied Human Resources and had to do an internship before graduation. She wanted to do that in a foreign country and Japan was her first choice.
Dear Katharina, since you are an early member of Internship Japan who did find an internship through the group and came to Japan, please tell us a bit about it. Positive and negative things – please speak freely from your heart. :-)
1. First, who are you? What are your dreams and why the interest in Japan?
I am a second-year student of labor market management at the University of Applied Labor Studies of the Federal Employment Agency (HdBA) in Mannheim, Germany. I have been in Tokyo for a language course in July 2010. During that time people as well as their way of thinking and their attitude towards work fascinated me in many ways. Furthermore I am very interested in the labor market situation of Japan.
2. Tell us about the planning and process.
Sadly my employer limited internship possibilities to public services or private employment agencies. That meant not too many choices in first place. My goal was Japan, so I contacted many Japanese employers. Soon I had to recognize that internships, real internship programs do not yet exist in Japan, like those we know from Germany. After I bothered a lot of people, someone recommended Verena Hopp from “Internship Japan” to me. Five months without any success, she first of all encouraged me not to give up and helped me to get an internship with a great HR company named Ingenium, so some months later I was able to sit on a plane to Tokyo and make my dream come true.
3. Your university gave you special conditions, please tell us about those.
I’m in a dual study program. My employer, the Federal Employment Agency, is the largest provider of labor market services in Germany. They want their students to get some impressions of work life in different countries and to get to know more about other cultures in a time period of two months. They paid the wage, accommodation and food.
4. Tell us about the internship in HR you did. What did you do? How and who is your boss etc.?
I worked in the Technology Team together with the Ingenium Partner and the Engagement Manager. They gave me an insight of the Technology industry and how working as a head hunter looks like. They integrated me very quickly into their running research process, where I was allowed to do some research and to map my results for them. Moreover I could observe team meetings and interesting telephone conferences.
5. Did you have any chance to study Japanese while in Japan or before coming? Will you come again?
I will definitely come again. Japan is totally worth every effort, time and money. I studied Japanese before coming to Tokyo, but learning Japanese while staying in Japan would probably be more effective.
6. How was Japan? Any message for young people thinking about coming to Japan?
In my opinion Japan and the Japanese people are unique. Their way of living and thinking and their whole self-image is totally different from anything I know. Having even a short experience in Japan can change your feelings towards your own country and you probably start questioning your own life attitude and start thinking about issues like solidarity or social regulations.
7. How can we as Internship Japan do better? You know we are growing, just recently received our status as official Non-Profit Organization, our goals can be seen here – reaching those will take time. So give us your advice please.
I’m very happy with the support from “Internship Japan”. Maybe it could be possible for your growing organization to get a connection with the Japanese embassy in Berlin and inform them about your plans, so they won't laugh at people who ask them about internships in Japan.
Katharina is now working on her BA-thesis, comparing the German and Japanese labor law. We, Internship Japan want to cooperate with universities and bring out our own materials for Japanese companies who are willing to take interns. There are many gray areas in the current laws and the term “intern” is not legally defined. We will bring out a definition – stay tuned.
1. Tell us about your company. What are you doing, about your markets and the countries you deal with the most.
Tsugi (www.tsugi-studio.com) offers consultancy and research & development services to the game, music and movie industries. We develop tools and engines for a variety of studios and middleware companies. Most of our clients are in the USA, in the UK, in Canada, and of course in Japan: basically countries with a strong game industry. We also publish our own line of software for creative people. One of our most popular products right now is DSP Anime which lets people create sound effects for their movies, animations and video games.
2. How did you find your intern and tell us about the process before the internship started.
It was really straightforward, we just posted a message on the Internship Japan group on LinkedIn (at the time, I believe your web site didn’t exist yet) and quickly several candidates contacted us. They were all quite interesting; we simply chose the person who seemed to be the best fit for the internship. A couple of emails with Sarah (our future intern), and everything was set! Because her school program required for their students to do an internship abroad (and they helped), and because she knew from the beginning that she wanted to do it in Japan, it was all very easy to organize. Also, we had welcomed interns from overseas previously, so we were already all set concerning her lodging in a Japanese-style share house and other matters.
3. What does an intern do at your company?
It will obviously depend on the intern’s skills. In the past we had interns in programming, sound design, graphic design and just now in marketing / PR. Since we are a small start-up, there is always a lot to do and everybody’s ideas are taken into consideration. An intern will do work directly related to his or her domain of expertise and will probably have more responsibilities than he or she would have interning in a bigger company. Interns are definitely not here to serve green tea!
4. What kind of person would be the ideal intern? What does your company need?
Right now we are looking for marketing / sales and programming interns. We get a lot of game design / graphic design requests too but unfortunately we don’t have any openings in these areas at the moment. That being said, new projects can start quickly so if anyone is interested, they definitely should send their resume, as these are the ones that we will read first when we start looking for new interns or even employees. Generally speaking, it’s easier if the intern has a basic knowledge of the game or animation industry and of the type of products we are making. We are also looking for someone who is really proactive.
5. How did your intern do while with you?
We are all very happy with Sarah’s work. She had a very good knowledge of the video game industry before coming here and was already very interested in Japan and anime, so it was really a good fit. Sarah also came at a time where we were really busy with various projects and she still managed to do wonders with very little supervision.
6. Which language did you use with your intern? Does the intern speak Japanese?
She didn’t speak Japanese (although she was learning and could read hiragana and katakana). We were speaking English at the office, which in most cases in this company will be just fine (unless of course you are interning to help with marketing / sales for Japan). However speaking Japanese –even just a little bit- will always be helpful for the daily life outside of the office. We are located in Nigata and there are not so many foreigners here, especially compared to Tokyo or Osaka, and fewer English-speaking locals.
7. How can we as Internship Japan do better? You know we are growing, wanting to become an NPO, our goals can be seen here – reaching those will take time. So give us your advice please.
Maybe we were lucky, but simply using the Internship Japan group on LinkedIn worked extraordinarily well for us! You may be preparing that already, but having an online database of internship offers and candidates would be great. Anything speeding up the process is welcome, so having the possibility for the companies to enter some search criteria and to receive automatically a notification when there is a match in the database would be awesome!
(Amos did his internship at Voyagin)
Thank you very much. We very much hope to hear from you in future. :-)
Dear Leo,
Since you are an early member of Internship Japan who did find an internship through the group and came to Japan, please tell us a bit about it. Positive and negative things – please speak freely from your heart. :-)
(Leo did his internship at SHINGETSU NEWS AGENCY)
Thank you very much. We very hope to hear from you in future. :-)
Edit: Leo finished studying and received his diploma from Tokyo Riverside School after he came back from a cool trip to Hokkaido.
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