Noah the banker
I accepted the offer from the company with an ignorantly sexist department head and turned down the other. Sexism was so prevalent in Japanese corporate culture (or everywhere else). Any […]
Job interviews – part 2
The next company that I got myself an interview with was one of the largest videogame publishers in Japan. Their videogames had an expansive variety of genres – from RPG, […]
Job interviews – part 1
The first one of the few companies that invited me to an interview was a publicly-traded videogame publisher whose mega-hit arcade game in the ’80s was still one of the […]
Choosing the industry
I do not comprehend what it means to love a country when Americans express their love and pledge to their country. The word patriotism haunts Japanese people with the memory […]
Job market Y2K
Students in Japan started shukatsu – job-hunting at the end of their third year, around March. Companies’ recruiters had presentations, where they introduced the company, corporate culture, and available positions. We were […]
End of bubble
I left for home at the end of May. Mark saw me off at the airport. Mark wasn’t afraid of showing tears. As we embraced, I heard a tour guide […]
Final exam
The semester was coming to an end. History of Japanese Arts was another fantastic class. High school history lessons touched statues, scrolls, and the architecture of different eras, but they […]
Stories of war – part 2
Mark and I were discussing the Columbine shooting, and the conversation somehow expanded to the wars. I do not remember the context, but I said the US shouldn’t have dropped […]
Stories of war – part 1
Since childhood, Japanese people born post-war period grow up listening to stories of WWII. At school, we learned Japan perpetrated atrocity to expand the power to other Asian territories. In […]
April 20th, 1999
In the second semester, I took a job at a language lab. A few times a week, I spent a couple of hours at the lab while students came in […]