The Confessions of an Intern Who Lives Far Away.
When I was accepted to the Global Internship Program in July 2020 for the summer of 2021, I never thought that the pandemic would last this long and that I would be doing it from home in India. But lo and behold here we are! Although I am physically in India while typing this out, it feels like I have already visited the HENNGE office in Shibuya.
The Work
Let’s start from the very beginning. The first day we were shown around the office (virtually of course) and given our first assignment. I’m not going to spoil the details, but I will tell you that you will probably be surprised that you have only 3 weeks to complete such a huge task. It’s a complex assignment but in the end, you will look back and be shocked at how much you managed to do in such a short time. Don’t worry you can always ask the help of your other interns and your mentors (I for one, definitely did).
The second assignment was short but very interesting. This one was to dip our toes into the world of DevOps and building infrastructure. DevOps was something completely new to me, so it was quite a difficult challenge.
Maybe by the time you’re reading this, the pandemic is almost over. In case it’s not, let me tell you, even though you are miles away from each other, you will almost feel like you are working in a virtual room with everyone else.
#Fun-Stuff
Now that that’s out of the way let’s move on to the fun stuff.
Every week there was board game night, I joined only two but they were so much fun! The games we played weren’t your typical board games, rather social games where we got to learn a lot of random facts about each other. One week we played a strange game of Pictionary where I drew a very beautiful picture of the Titanic if I do say so myself.
Boardgame Night and the Beer Bash was really when I understood ‘HENNGE culture’. No one was forced to participate but I am glad I did. Everyone was very friendly and helped you feel comfortable talking with a new group of people.
I randomly got grouped up with two other people within HENNGE to talk with during the last week of the Internship. We talked about things random but common to us, one of which was which streaming service we preferred and the Yodobashi Camera theme song.
If you’re lucky you might get to see the All-Hands meeting where Ogura-san (CEO/ CTO) updates everyone on how the company is doing (basically great, with some ambitious goals). We all received some goodies, even little me in India! Every single one of these packages was personally packed by the founders! It had a cute mug, stickers, and some sweets.
My Thoughts
Every minute of this internship, we had a new challenge. Make sure to ask every question you have, whether it's one related to work or just something on a personal level about life in Japan. And keep interacting with the other interns of course. I’m so lucky that I happened to google ‘internship Japan’ one day and HENNGE was the first one to come up. If you’re reading this, I hope you’re one of the lucky ones selected to join the internship.
There are still two weeks left to this internship, which will be on-site, so goodbye until then!
Mohita Bipin is a student at the Government Model Engineering College, India. She interned with the HENNGE Global Internship Program from May 17th to June 11th, 2021.
