Startup and venture capital culture: America vs. Japan
Recently my professor was quoted in an article from Forbes: Starting Up Start-Ups In Japan: Obstacles abound; new U.S. ambassador expected to highlight importance of venture culture. Another interesting article is also linked to on that page: Searching For Entrepreneurship in Japan.
I am not an expert on this subject, but in my 7+ years in Japan I have talked to [...]
Renting an apartment in Japan: expenses, guarantors, and prejudice
Let me start with a little background for anyone who is not familiar with the Japanese real estate system and what it’s like to find housing in Tokyo. First, let me discuss the fees. Before you can move into an apartment here, you will need to pay up front about 6-8 months of rent. Some [...]
Shortage of underpaid Japanese engineers: go figure?
Recently I found this article from the New York Times entitled High-Tech Japan Running Out of Engineers. (Warning: free registration and login required to read). It discusses the decreasing numbers of students choosing engineering majors in Japan. I found it particularly interesting because as an American engineer in Japan, I have long fought with the [...]
Starting work in Japan as a lowly new graduate - did someone say COBOL?
From Wikipedia’s COBOL entry:
Critics have argued that COBOL’s syntax serves mainly to increase the size of programs, at the expense of developing the thinking process needed for software development. In his letter to an editor in 1975 titled “How do we tell truths that might hurt?”, computer scientist and Turing Award [...]