My GIP Experience (by Ray)

Hi, I’m Ray from Hong Kong. I’m currently having my undergraduate studies in Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In this article, I’m going to show you my wonderful 6 weeks internship experience at HDE.
Application
Last summer, I was planning to have an internship in a foreign country to learn more and experience more. My first choice is Japan since I am a big fan of JPop, Japanese TV series, and Japanese food. I am interested in Software Engineering jobs, so I was looking for a Software Engineering Intern in Japan. After googling it, I found HDE Global Internship Program. The program includes round-trip airfares coverage, up to 150,000 JPY/month subsidy, and more. Also, Japanese is not required! This is appealing to me, so I decided to give it a shot and apply.
The first step is the code challenge. We have to solve a coding question in Golang, and submit it in an interesting way. To submit the solution, we have to deal with cryptography techniques by reading a RFC documentation. Thankfully, there is no deadline for submission, so that I can do more researches on Google to solve the challenge. 2 weeks later, I got an interview invitation and it was scheduled a week later. The interviewers were friendly and nice, so I was feeling relieved. Finally, I was accepted!
Accommodation
The first thing I needed to handle is my place to live. HDE recommended Sakura House to me. Sakura House provides share house renting service in which you pay and you get a private bedroom with everything ready to use. I didn’t have too many choices, but I really want to keep my commuting time short. I ended up renting 2 different share houses. The first one near Kita-sando Station is for my temporary stay for 2 weeks, and the one near Shin-Ōkubo Station is for the rest of the time. Although both 2 share houses have excellent access to Shibuya Station, walking from Shibuya Station to HDE’s office takes around 14 minutes. As a result, my door to door commuting time was about 30 minutes. Not super short, but at least I can sleep more every day!

Working Environment

HDE’s workplace is not a typically Japanese workplace. Instead, they decided to make the company more global, so they are switching their official language to English. Most of their employees can speak English quite fluently, and you can expect everyone can speak at least in casual conversations. They even keep providing English learning supports and programs for their employees! Communication is not a problem for me even though I am not good at Japanese.
HDE also provides a relaxing workplace. They let their employees freely choose their seat, and a fixed seat is not required. They also hold a lot of events, which I am going to introduce later.
Sometimes when I need a brief rest, what I did is sitting in front of the office’s window and enjoy the view of Shibuya. What a wonderful workplace!
Intern Task
The intern tasks are exciting. Before we worked on a real-world project, we were given training from development to deployment.
The first 3 weeks were for the training about essential Software Engineer skills. We first built a toy application. Then, we were guided by the DevOps team to learn more about infrastructure. The training is super well-rounded and useful!
After training, we were assigned to different teams to work on a real-world project, where I got chances to challenge myself and try difficult tasks! When my supervisors were explaining the task to me, I told them that it would be even better to finish the task through re-architecture. Can you trust me?
I got the chance to take it. Thanks to everyone’s trust, helps and comments, I came up with a new architecture which is more stable and developer-friendly. I really enjoyed the tasks!
The following keywords can sum up what I learned.
Python, Redis, AWS, Docker, DevOps, CircleCI, Chef, Terraform, Vue
GIP Lunch

Each intern will have 10 company-paid lunches together with 2 employees. There are various types of restaurants near Shibuya. They recommended some to me, so I don’t have to worry too much about choosing what to eat (It’s the most difficult decision to make!). During having lunch with them, it is a good chance for me to get to know each other, know more about the company and also know more about Japan! It’s a good chance to ask everything about Japan. For example, 祭 (Festival), how to say it in Japanese, etc. They also recommended some nice places to me, and helped me plan my weekends!
Board Game Night
For every Wednesday, after work, we will stay and have a board game night! They will also provide free dinner. I am not a big fan of board games, but I enjoy the atmosphere while playing it! It’s especially relaxing when the game needs a lot of discussions, like Secret Hitler, which you have to lie in order to survive! I really enjoyed the board game night, where we can have a lot of fun together in the middle of the week.
Monthly Technical Session (MTS)

Monthly Technical Session (MTS) is a causal technical conference held every month at HDE. After the conference, we will have a party and drink!

Everyone in the company is encouraged to give presentations to share their thoughts or recent trends in technology. This is definitely a great place to learn from others and gain more experience. I joined and presented twice. The first one was about my personal experience of React, and the second one was about my intern life. We will have a party after MTS, where I can talk to different colleagues to hear their story.
Exploring Tokyo
Before I go to Japan, I don’t have any plan for my weekends. Thankfully, I got chances to join other interns and colleagues every Saturday. We visited a lot of nice places together, so you can (always XD) find me at Yuhao’s and Silvia’s post. I don’t want to overlap their posts, so I am going to share some of my personal trips.

There are lots of places for seeing Tokyo’s city view. I personally recommend World Trade Center Building Observatory. It is close to Tokyo Tower, and the ticket is 620JPY only. You can easily get there from Hamamatsuchō Station.

Apart from the night view of modern buildings, I also like the sunset at the seaside. It’s a quiet and natural place for those living in a busy city to relax!

The weather was pretty nice, and I can see Mt. Fuji from Gotemba! The outlet is huge enough for me to spend a whole day.

Conclusion
Looking back at my internship experience, I would say this is an unforgettable experience in my whole life. Thanks to everyone at HDE, I am grateful to say I achieved my original goal of having an internship abroad — to learn and experience more!
