Taking the Scenic Route (by James)
My experience in Japan while interning with HDE (now HENNGE).
One of my favorite things in Japan has always been its walkability. I grew up in Texas where you typically need a car to get anywhere. During my internship, I was able to live in a share house close enough to Shibuya that I could walk to HDE in 30 minutes or so. Luckily, I came during the fall season so the weather was almost always nice enough to walk. It may be a good idea to avoid Japanese summer months if you also like walking around.
If you’re coming from America, the jet-lag is a bit of an adjustment. The first week or two I was usually waking up around 3 to 4AM every morning, and trying really hard to stay awake until 10PM. On the plus side of this, I got to get some great pictures of Shinjuku during early morning golden hour (the time during sun-rise/sunset where the light has this golden color, it’s a great time to take pictures). Sunrise in Japan can be quite early. Luckily, it’s not so early in the winter, but if you’re here in the summer it can be as early as 4:30 am.
HDE is always trying to make the internship program better, so I won’t go into too many details of what you may do as an intern. Definitely go check out the other interns' posts to hear their experiences. I did get to try a lot of new (to me) technologies. I got to use Amazon Web Services, Python (with Flask), Google App Engine, React, and Golang. While I have some experience with some of those, it was great to try it in a new environment. And talk to people who were quite good with the technologies.
One of my favorite things about HDE is how they always want to keep growing and learning. This has been a personal goal of my own for years, so to intern at a company that also values that was very exciting. One of the best examples of them changing is their adoption of English as the official company language. The CEO (pictured above in the kimono) got the nickname ‘Richie’ when he lived abroad when he was young. When I heard the company used English and saw the nickname, I assumed the CEO had always spoken English. However, during an introductory meeting about the company, I learned that’s not the case. He relearned English so he could lead the company. I have a large amount of respect for him.
My share house was pretty well located to a lot of neat areas to explore. One of them is Kichijoji. This area has so many different cafés. The atmosphere of the shops are so well put together. It’s always exciting to try a new one and see how they do things. Some places have interesting drinks, good food, or they have a good atmosphere for studying or meeting with friends. It’s a great area to explore.
I don’t think I could talk about my time in Japan without talking about Shimokitazawa. It’s an area known for its sub-cultures. Fashion, second-hand shops, cafes, and — what I enjoyed most — live houses. Live houses are music venues that will host bands, DJs, etc. I wandered into one on a Friday night and just listened to a bunch of random local bands. They were amazing. The next day I went out and bought musicians ear-plugs so I could go again without damaging my ears. Most venues are quite small and very loud. I highly recommend just going out and checking up on a random live house. Friday nights might have better line ups, but they’ll typically be more expensive. Be on the lookout, some venues offer deals to foreigners who are traveling. I was able to get 50% off at one of the live houses.
The next time I went to listen was an event called Shimokitazawa Nite. There were over 100 bands playing at ~14 different live houses in one day. After paying for a wrist band (around $40 USD), over the course of 6 to 7 hours I managed to listen to 8 different bands. It was an absolutely incredible time. Definitely got my mileage out of the earplugs (I can still hear! Yay!). Interestingly, live houses banned photos being taken inside. Which means everyone is there to listen to the music rather than trying to Instagram it. Which is great to really stay in the moment and enjoy the music, but it does mean I didn’t get any neat photos from it.
HDE offered different internship slots. I chose an October-to-December slot. One of my favorite things about Japan during this time is the fall leaves. In Tokyo, the majority of the time you’re not always particularly close to a lot of trees. But the areas that have them are great. Some of my favorites were Yoyogi Uehara and Jingu Gaien. They’re both beautiful areas and within 30 minutes from Shibuya.
Halloween has been becoming more and more popular in the last few years. Shibuya has massive parties around the time. If Halloween lands on a weekend, it’s going to be insanely packed. If it’s during the week, the party will be split between the weekend and the night of Halloween. I’m not a huge party goer, so I opted to attend board-game night (weekly HDE event, you’ll absolutely hear about it from the other intern posts). I was pleasantly surprised that my neighborhood held a special Halloween event just for kids. The kids went to the neighborhood businesses and did trick-or-treating, played games, etc. This was neat to see as Japan doesn’t do the door-to-door trick-or-treating in neighborhoods like American neighborhoods often do.
Cafés
I tend to program as a hobby as well, so having access to so many nice cafés in Tokyo was exciting. You can find them all over the place. As I mentioned above, Kichijoji has a huge concentration of cafes. Most of them are very stylish and well designed. There’s always a variety of drinks. Many places do their own spin on things and offer a lot of unique drinks, flavors, foods, and atmosphere. Some of them are quite expensive though, so be careful.
I often spent a bit of time on the weekends exploring areas, taking pictures, working on projects. My top three to check out would be Frankie in Shimokitazwa, Lattest in Omotesando, and Chai Break in Kichijoji.
If you’re a Terrace House fan: Yes, (as of Fall 2018) Mizuki seems to still work at Lattest.
I think the biggest question I have after my experience during this internship is: Why do I get way more belly button lint while living in Japan? Seriously. What’s up with that?
James Crisman is a Software Developer from the United States. He studied Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. James was one of the HENNGE Global Interns for October 29-December 14th, 2018. Apply now by cracking the IT challenge here.
