1: preface
I once worked in a Software company in Japan for more than half a year from college to internship. Then after returning to China, I worked in an Internet company in Hangzhou for several years. This article, looking back at those years, also wants to compare the differences between the lives of code farmers in the two countries
2: The company
The company WHERE I worked as an intern was a traditional software company located in Umeda Ward, Osaka city. Umeda is the downtown of Osaka, which is very prosperous and close to shisaibashi, which is well known to Chinese people. It is only a few stops away by subway.
I went there as a trainee, got paid and didn’t live much. Basically just write Java and test it yourself.
3: Living conditions
3.1: Food, clothing and accommodation
3.1.1: eat
Because I’m from ningbo, the habit of eating at ordinary times is lighter, so in Japan are used to eat, taste is also close to, but for the Chinese, or Japanese food taste is too slow, usually also is in the company cafeteria to eat dinner, a meal is about 500 yen (about 30 dollars less than (RMB), and restaurant are delicious, I think, than the outside Curry, Chinese, western, ramen you name it.
But it is strange that Japanese dumplings are fried dumplings, and they are a dish, eaten with rice… very bland
Of course, sometimes I will go back to the dormitory to cook by myself after work. In Japan, it is relatively easy to cook. Supermarkets have ready-made cooked food or prepared bags, and the quality of dishes is relatively good (In Japan, meat and vegetables will be constantly discounted every half hour or one hour, and they will be directly thrown to the homeless at night).
The snacks in the supermarket are also very delicious, but they are too sweet. Every day after work, I want to buy a wave of crazy food. I feel that all my wages are spent on buying food.
This Meiji strawberry milk is really great to drink, I strongly suggest to go to Japan to play friends to buy a few bottles to drink, and domestic milk drink up to feel different.
In particular, our dormitory has 5 floors, each floor has about 7 or 8 rooms, but this building only two people live in me and my classmates, we live on the 4th floor, the interior decoration is similar to Japanese horror movies, every time we go upstairs, it is scary!!
3.1.2: accommodation
The dormitory provided by the company is located in a small town halfway between Osaka and Kyoto. There are not many people, but there is a supermarket nearby, which is quite convenient.
3.2: traffic
Because I am living in Osaka (Japanese prefectures of China’s provincial administrative units) of a small city, under the right in the middle of the Osaka and Kyoto, it usually take a bus to the station to work, then e. tram station by Beijing to the Osaka center, just sit next to the last stop is the company, is very convenient.
As shown in the figure above, there are different trains in Japan. Some express trains stop at many small stations, and some slow trains stop at every station. Please pay attention to the colors and Chinese characters of the trains. (Haha, but WHEN I go outside, I like to take the slow train and enjoy the view along the tracks.)
Japanese bus and tram schedules are really super accurate, except for one time when someone committed suicide by throwing himself on the rails and stopping for 10 minutes, but when you get out of the station, someone will give you a tram delay card, which you just need to show the company that you are delayed.
3.3: Leisure and entertainment
I have to say that Japan is a very aging country. In the small city where I live, there is almost no one on the streets on weekends, just like Silent Hill. Some shops and supermarkets are full of people in their 70s and 80s
Life in neon country may be too light and boring for the Chinese who love the hustle and bustle, but those who prefer the laid-back lifestyle may be more comfortable.
For me the weekend may go to Kyoto nara walk, take a walk or go to Osaka street, because I love it itself is a cultural landscape of people, so I basic rarely go to scenic spots, like the family residential building or roaming the streets, the status of all kinds of people’s life, feeling the different details and the impact of culture brought to me.
4: work
4.1: Job content
Okay, let’s talk about work before it feels like a travel book.
In fact, my usual work is relatively simple, because the nature of communication is more, so I will change the bug and test by myself. Here I’m going to be poking fun at the test process of Japan, can promote the Japanese rigorous (rigid) fine tradition, probably a small bug, change for 5 minutes, but you need to do about 3, 4 days of testing work, write a super perfect test report, going over the whole regression tests, each button point after what happened, description and screenshots. I think companies in China have no time to do such things, after all, they are basically backward projects.
4.2: Technology stack
In terms of technology stack, as we all know, the old capitalist countries have a conservative style, I still use JDK1.4, basically, a lot of the code was written more than 10 years ago.
And then there’s the whole code style story… It is probably a method dozens of lines, comments may be hundreds of lines, what did you change in such and such a year, what impact, write a huge detail… We have seen JDK source code for a lot of method annotations, a very long section of English, there is several times longer than JDK source Japanese annotations.
4.3: Colleague relationship
In Japan, the relationship between colleagues may be weak. From my observation, I know that everyone is just a colleague relationship. Usually, there are only overlaps in work, such as going to izakaya for dinner after work in the same department. I think people prefer to keep a small core group.
4.4: Working intensity
In developed countries should be the same as Japan and South Korea is the strongest working intensity, but compared with developing countries so it is quite relaxed, at least I stay in the company is such, basically every three or five is three even rest, Chinese New Year what is five even rest. There’s plenty of time to do my own thing.
5:
In general, Japanese code farmers feel almost completely different from Chinese code farmers. Some people will like the Chinese way of life, others will like the Japanese way of life, it’s a matter of opinion.
But as a tourist destination (especially for someone like me who prefers cultural sites to natural ones), Japan is a great place to visit.
