I know I promised you guys a blog post about the work I do in Japan during my 2 month stay in here. I am still very exhausted from my earlier walk today around Shibuya and Roppongi, but I guess I owe it to my school to write about my work as well. I really don't have any pictures to accompany this post, so you just need to enjoy a nice wall of text - 頑張ってね！ Ganbatte!/Do your best!
I do multiple things at the office. It's all mobile video game related. I get to design banners for mobile ads that pop-up durring gameplay, and I also get to play test some new games not released yet to the consumer market. I mainly use Photoshop and excel for most of my work, but there are other programs as well. Obviously I can not talk about what kind of games I play test, but they are for phone and tablet only, phone VR helmet included. Many of them are fun and addicting, and easily something that I would see myself playing in the future.
I also plan and write game manuals, all in Japanese. Ogawa-san has given me permission to write them in English, but since he proofreads them anyway, I find it much more beneficial for me to write them in Japanese and then he can correct me where it is needed.
My workhours are from 11:00 to 19:00, which is the usual 8 hour work day, with 1 hour break from 13:00 to 14:00. We always go to a restaurant to eat, since the food is always cheap and there are literally dozens of restaurants within 100m distance from the office, so each day feels unique during the lunch hour.
I mainly communicate in Japanese in the office, for I wish to become better at it. Obviously I am not able to say everything I want in Japanese (Many things I can't say in Japanese), but if I were to use English whenever I didn't know how to say something, I would only shoot myself to foot, for it would not teach me anything. If I want to say something, I will learn how to say it. In the office nobody speaks the kind of English which would be any good for the work we do, so English really isn't an option there anyway. I love the Japanese language, and for this very reason it would be insane for me not to learn it. I didn't come here to speak English, and I am actually very happy that there is no such option to use it anywhere.
Tomorrow I am suppose to go to showcase the latest VR game to a certain company which will decide whether it will participate in the business in selling the product in Japan. What makes this interesting, is that we are suppose to sell the idea for them, but I am suppose to pull this off in Japanese. On top of this, I was sick last week, and I have been completely out of the training process before the big meeting, so I wonder if they are still going to put me on the spotlight. If they are, I really don't care even if I haven't practiced enough to do it, I will manage somehow, I simply have to, there is no other option for me.
A thing to mention about my work is, that this is a game localization company. This means they do a lot business with foreign game companies who develop mobile games. Due to the language barrier and cultural differences both in consumer market and laws, this company allows western games to find their way to Japan. But before they hit the Japanese mobile market, they go under a huge change, sometimes to a point where they don't look anything like the original game. The western style character graphics often change in to Anime. Yep, you have your world war 2 german soldier who looks all serious and realisticly drawn, and it is changed in to a cute anime girl, no kidding. In reality, Japan has a huge market for Anime style, and it really shows when walking the streets of Tokyo. Everywhere where you look, there is Anime posters, -adds, -statues, and much more. Anime is seen as a normal way to commercialize everything, from coffee shops to massaging spas, and more. Anime really seems to be a normal thing for people of all ages, and elderly are not exception either, they also enjoy their anime. It would be very hard for me to imagine my parents watching Anime, but here more often than not the parents are the one who watch more anime than their children.
To get back to my work, there really isn't much to say as of now. It's work like any other, computer graphic and video game related. I am here to study the Japanese work culture, which has been very interesting thus far. I currently enjoy my work at the office and the company of Ogawa-san, Kato-san, and others of course, has been very pleasant. I will write more about my work as something actually interesting happens.