One year into my abroad study in Japan, I decided to apply for an internship at YCS (Yamaha Corporate Service) to get an idea of what it would be like to work in Japan. This was also part of the requisite credit (10-day Mandatory Internship) that I will have to undergo for graduation during my 4-year Computer Science course of the ABP program at Shizuoka University.

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The Call for Application

It all started when I was in the first semester (around June) when I received an e-mail from my university notifying me about the application call for an internship program at Yamaha Corporate Service (in Hamamatsu). And the interesting part was that I was the only first year student to apply for the internship and all my other friends said that it was quite early for them as they feel they are still inexperienced and needed time to hone their skills. I felt my experience was insufficient as well at that time and that I might be ineligible to apply as first year student, but I decided to give it a try anyhow because I wanted, or rather needed, experience one way or another and one of the best ways to gain it is to actually do it. Plus, there was nothing to lose and even in worst case scenario, I just don't get to do the internship. So I prepared the documents and applied for the internship, which surprisingly went pretty well and I got passed the first document screening.

Fig: Email Notification of the Application Call

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The Interview

The interview was conducted at the Headquarters of YCS which was quite a distance fom my university and I went there with a bicycle. But in Hamamatsu city where I live, there are hills as high as three-story building, which without a motor-mounted bicycle, you will get quite an intense workout. Luckily, most of my paths to the interview were downhill, so I didn't break a sweat. Before entering the interview, I was greeted by the application manager who handled my application to the internship at the lobby of YCS Headquarters where there was a giant polar bear display. Then, I was instructed to wait to be called for the interview. As I waited, I noticed all the different exhibits just across the main lobby which apparently has displays of different pianos, from electrical ones all the way to a Grand Piano that had the keys made with elephant ivory.

Fig: Polar Bear Display at the Lobby of YCS Headquarters

Finally, it was the time for the interview, and I was lead to a room where the president of YCS, the lead manager and the head of the ICT department were waiting for me. To be honest, it was quite intimidating to sit and be interviewed at the presence of the top officials of a company. And funny enough, I had an awkward interaction at the beginning of the interview.

So as I sat down on the chair at the start of the interview, I still don't know why but there was just silence and a pause that lasted for more than five seconds. Feeling uneasy and looking at the interviewers staring at me, I initiated the conversation by asking....."Shall I start introducing myself?". Then suddenly, the interviewers started looked at each other and shared a laugh and at the time, I also couldn't help but started smiling too. The interaction definitely eased the tension of the atmosphere and made it easier for me to continue on with the interview. In fact, I lost track of the time during the interview as it went on smoothly. But clearly, I had left an impression on the interviewers with that interaction.

The questions from the interviewers included prompts regarding my reason for the application, what I intend to learn from this experience and some other general questions. And after the interview was over, all I had to do was wait for the result from them.

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The Beginning of the Internship

A few weeks later, I got notified that I was selected as an intern for the 2-week program at YCS. It was also the first time that I had to deal with digitally signing contracts, which was just basically the same with the physical one. It required a digital signature in the place of physical seals, but the process was really fast.

On the day of the internship, I found myself with two other interns from my university who were in their second year. One of them was to learn about building an AI guide and chatbot while the other was to perform RPA (Robotic Process Automation), which was the same project that I took part in. What RPA is, is basically the automation of repetitive tasks done with the computer software. For example, automating the process of pulling the necessary information such as the run time data as texts from the main cloud framework of the company, which is used for calculation of runtime costs. The framework utilized for implementing the RPA was called UiPath, which consists of blocks of pre-built code to perform certain tasks.

Fig: The Concept of WebScrapping with UiPath

One of the projects that I took part in was the usage of UiPath website scraping, where we were required to automate the process of getting commute fees from the Yahoo Navigation Website. The process of inputting the name of the station from an Excel Spread Sheet into the webpage, finding out the fare and scraping the data back into specific cells in the spreadsheet was made possible with a single click by automating it with the UiPath framework. Due to the confidentiality of the company, I wasn't able to take picture on the details of the project that we did, but the main part of the internship was learning to built custom scripts and interfaces that would capture data off the internet and use it as we required.

Another great part about the internship was the fact that we were paid our commuting fees and our lunches for the entire duration of the internship. The headquarters was a bit far away from my dormitory, where I had to take the bus and to the station and take a train form there. As for the lunch we get to eat at the company's cafeteria with our manager and department team lead.

Fig: Luch at the Company's Cafeteria

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Things that I learned at the Internship

The main work that I took part during the internship was in the automation process of the various processes on a computer as provided in the example above. On top of the automation tasks, we were also given a tour around the YCS headquarters, their exhibit area and the innovative research that they were focusing at the time. The exhibits displayed the history of YAMAHA of how it went from producing motorcycles after the second world war, to an innovative company that also specializes in the production of musical instruments. Apparently, it all started in 1887 when the founder of the company, Yamaha Torakusu, repaired an organ at an elementary school and proceeded to succeed at producing an organ at the same year. Visit this site for the full history.

Another thing learned through this internship was that the working condition of Japanese companies are not as bad as those you hear on the internet. It was actually quite the opposite. For example, employees were given the choice of working remotely or at the company, and over the course of the internship, there were over 50% of employees at our department who worked from home. Of course, I cannot say for sure for all other companies in Japan, and it was during the time when Covid-19 restrictions started to ease, but I could see that working in Japan is not like how the internet portrays where employees are being overworked. They were allowed to start the work late or leave early (proportionately to their work time) too. As a personal opinion, those foreigners who complain about working conditions in Japan are usually the ones with insufficient Japanese proficiency. The reason I can say that for sure is that I could feel the synergy and the emphasis of team-work that Japanese employees have during my internship there. And the key to tuning in and harmonizing with their work culture, I believe, lies in your ability to communicate with your peers.

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The End of the Internship

Nearing in to the end of the internship, we were required to prepare and deliver a presentation on what we learned and implemented throughout the internship. This was to be done in front of the entire ICT department that I was in which consisted of around 70 members some of which participated online. And quite surprisingly, my presentation did not go well. It was one of the moments where your script proved to work during the preparation phase but decides to screw you up during actual demo.

So when I was trying to demonstrate how we implemented the scraping of data form the internet, there arose an error in the middle of running the software. And yes, everybody clearly saw the giant prompt that displayed the error. But thankfully, as I closed the error message, the desired result was achieved and I confirmed it in the Excel Spread Sheet. Though it did not go smoothly, I was able to demonstrate the concept of the project that I worked on. And after that we had a light snack and took a picture.

Fig: Photo at the end of the Internship

After the internship was over, the program still required me to produce a report and make another presentation on the tasks during the internship that were relevant to my course of study. This is the final task of the internship program at my university. And this time, I made sure to not include any live demonstration but pre-recorded performance of the tasks as I did not want to risk having errors in front of the professor in charge. With the deliverance of the presentation, the entire process of the internship was finally over and I got the credit registered.

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Key Takeaways

• Language is key. (Especially in speaking and writing, being proficient in these two languages will really set you off and give you tremendous advantages as a foreigner studying in Japan. This is perhaps one of the reasons why I got through the selection process even though I was a first year student. )

• Be aware of having the Imposter Syndrome. (Even though I felt that I was inexperienced, I applied for the internship anyway and still got the position. The best way to gain experience is to actually gain by doing it.)

• Infinitely recheck your Demos, especially if it's live. (Nothing feels more frustrating and embarrassing than having your demo failed live.)

Thanks for reading thus far!

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