IT Internships in Japan

As a little bit of background, the author is an international student from the computer science (artificial intelligence major) background, living in Tokyo. Thus, this article is written from the IT-industry perspective (especially, interning at Japanese companies).

Why an Internship?

Gaining working experience meme. Source: careeradvice.careers24.com

Have you ever seen that meme? You are required to have experience before getting your first experience. In the currently ridiculous world, one cannot exaggerate the importance of having an internship. Some universities even require internships to graduate. Putting the half-joke aside, if finding the right job/company is analogous to finding a partner, an internship is analogous to the courtship process. On top of getting real work experience and salary (paid internship), an internship provides you with the opportunity to know more about a company’s working environment and exercise problem-solving skills. It is also a chance for you to make an impression, which offers you advantages should you apply for a full-time position at the same company you interned at. I have heard that some companies even require you to be an intern before applying for a full-time position.

How to write graduate school admission application email

Recently, I got relatively many questions from Tokyo Tech’s prospective students (probably because they saw this article) on how to write application email (to get prospective supervisor’s consent). Interestingly, there was actually a session (in Tokyo Tech’s career development class) discussing this matter. Writing an academic email is essential, yet it is not (or mostly not) taught in undergraduate (as far as I know). As a consequence, it is probably that there are many (arguably) good prospective applicants who got ignored because they wrote the spam-like emails. This is clearly a waste of talent.

…there are many (arguably) good prospective applicants who got ignored because they wrote the spam-like emails…

As a background why it is important to write a good email…

Scientific Communication: the Importance of Information Exchange

When you are doing research, you probably think that the end-goal of your research is writing papers, since you are just producing dust in the thin air otherwise. Communication (writing papers included) is highly important so that your research is useful for a wide audience.  That being said, people won’t now that you are an exceptional researcher and/or the significance of your research unless you communicate. Furthermore, formal/informal exchange, which (I think) many people (including me) missed, is equally (actually) as important as writing papers. In this post, I will share you (subject to my experience and observation) on how to advertise your research.

NLP2018 (Okayama) + Shikoku (side trip)

In the middle of March this year, I attended NLP2018 (annual meeting of the association for natural language processing in Japan). You can check my paper here (I presented my research internship in Yahoo! Japan during summer 2017). This conference is a non-referred (non-peer-reviewed), we could submit our paper to other conferences/journals (In fact, my paper was accepted in CICLing2018 too). Being a domestic conference, most papers in NLP2018 were presented in Japanese (only a few in English). However, I enjoyed the conference (even more than CICLing2018, seriously). Going to CICLing2018 right away after NLP2018 makes me want to bash the former, but I’ll save that story for later. As expected, Japanese researchers produce high-quality papers in NLP (this is one of the reasons I decided to continue my study in Japan).

JCII camera museum

There are many museums around Tokyo. However, this speciality museum will amaze you on another level. Located closely to Hanzomon station (around 3mins walk),  JCII camera museum exhibits Japanese cameras since Taisho period (1912~). If I recall correctly, I found the information about this museum in find my Tokyo webpage (official website from Tokyo Metro). Without much more text, I will show you the pictures of beautiful pieces of engineering.

 

Preferential attachment in social network and the Matthew effect

I think the term Matthew effect is not an unfamiliar jargon for most people. Simply said, it is the phenomena of rich becoming richer and poor becoming poorer. In this article, I want to give a little bit explanation of why (probably) this phenomenon happens (inspired by complex network lectures) in social network. By social network, I do not mean the social network services (like facebook, twitter, etc.) but the social network in general (interaction between people).

Things you probably ask yourself in early 20’s

There are things you might ask yourself as a young adult (mainly, I mean in an early 20’s) or probably trying to solve. I found some aspects of life are difficult to deal with. I don’t have the correct answer for them as I am still struggling to find the solution. Nevertheless, hopefully, this post will give you some “image” of struggle being in the early adult period.

Balance in Life

This is it! Yes, the typical question young adult asks (including me). When we talk about the balance in life, probably we gonna divide our life into three main activities: study, relationship, and sleep. Study does not only mean studying at school, it includes pursuing whatever you like and practising religiously. Relationship in “general” means (not only romantic one) friendship, relationship with your family, and so on. Sleep, yes sleep! Leisures and entertainment are included as well.

Explore Tohoku: Akita and Aomori

I have heard from foreigners living in Japan that they like Japan so much, one of the reasons is because of its beautiful scenery (it is! undoubtedly and undeniably). On the first week of November in this year, I went for a short time for exploring Tohoku area with my friends. Specifically, Akita and Aomori prefecture. We went to (ordered by course): Kakunodate, Oodate, Lake Towada, and Aomori. We moved from the southern part to the northern part of Tohoku, and then we return to Tokyo from Aomori by bus. Personally, I like less touristy places because it feels more “Japan” (for whatever reasons).