Re: [tlug] From an enthusiast TLUG follower

["Jens John" <lists@example.com>]

Hello Matteo,

your email is essentially the same request I sent to this mailing list back in 2014, and somebody who read it brought me into one of the best teams (European-American-Japanese) in tech the like of which I haven't found again so far, so there are definitely some invidiuals in interesting positions who might respond to you off list.

What makes this difficult for not-so-multinational companies is that you're still residing in the US, which wasn't the case for me, as I had just spent an exchange year there and was just looking for a local summer internship. If you want to help yourself in the visa department you might want to read through the Immigration Bureau's website, and identify and acquire the documents you might need ahead of time so that in the event you receive an offer, there won't be any unnecessary delays.

[What deserves a footnote is that, if you weren't American but from a country from which you could enter Japan using a working holiday visa, the WHV can be (slightly ab-)used to get a foot into Japan and pitch yourself to future internship companies or potential employers. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar from which other, if any, special visa arrangements an American could profit.]

Apart from informal inquiries in channels like this mailing list, please try to make use of the big multinational's summer internship programs (like Google, Amazon, JP Morgan,…) or look at large Japanese companies who might offer real internship programs (like Sony, …); for the latter you often have to apply by January or Feburary of the year you want to start the program, so unless you're looking to start next summer, you're almost certainly late for this kind of program this year. In 2014, I also was late for the regular internship programs and tried to apply directly to some  "real"  Japanese companies or their major subsidiaries, like a company of KDDI or NTT Docomo, and the replies I received were essentially the sounds of crickets at the edge of a lush forest after a summer rain --- nobody at Japanese conglomerates cares if you apply for anything outside of the regular channels, so use those if you can.

If you're close to embedded programming, and would like to get in touch with some people who might know about some opportunities in the field, you could get in touch with https://hackerfarm.jp/work-with-us/ or the people of https://www.tokyohackerspace.jp/en.

Unfortunately I no longer work in or for Japan so I can't help you directly at the moment, but I wish you all the best, and hope that as for the "how", I've shed a bit of light on the possibilities.

On Tue, 25 Aug 2020, at 00:58, Matteo G wrote:

Hi, my name is Matteo

I am writing to you this email to exchange some information about our countries, in fact I am a student of Computer Science at University of Camerino - UNICAM (Italy) and going to graduate soon.

Here is my point: I would like to take an internship (as part of my graduation program) in a foreign country and I would really like to do it in Japan.

I was thinking that maybe you work in a company that is accepting people for internships. I would like to do obviously in the IT sector, as a software developer / engineer / programmer, anyway where coding is required.

I am pretty much skilled in C and Python especially (a little bit of Java too) and I'm learning _javascript_ and some frameworks like Node.js and React JS right now due to a full-stack development project required by one of the university exams.

I am really interested in the field of IT security, especially in O.S. security mechanisms and would like to continue my career in this way, hoping one day to work in an IT security company.

No need to say I am a Linux user from a lot of time and I use it everyday (since 2012).

Back to us, I'm just sending you this email to ask if you can help me to know how to apply for an internship in a IT company there in Japan.

Any help would be appreciated, hope to hear you soon, have a great day.

Best regards,

Matteo