First Day at Work

My first day at work happened to be the day the typhoon came closest to Tokyo. The wind and rain were not too bad in the morning, so I left right on time at nine. My shoes were so bad at keeping out water that they had completely changed color before I even reached Toritsu-Daigaku Station. On the platform, the first train was bound for Wakoshi and absolutely packed. My heart sank and I let it go. The next one only went as far as Shibuya and was much emptier.

Shibuya Station is deep underground, and its layout is incredibly complicated. The moment I came out of the station, I lost my sense of direction and wandered around in the heavy rain for quite a while. By the time I reached the company, everything below my waist was soaked, but I still managed to get to the HDE reception desk on time. Not long after that, Nakagome-san appeared.

The view from the tenth floor was beautiful

I nervously introduced myself and said hello to everyone, finished the paperwork, picked up my laptop, and then found out that I would be sitting two seats away from CEO Ogura-san (Mr. Kazuhiro Ogura).

At noon, I was treated to lunch at a restaurant near the office. Nakagome-san explained that this was company policy: to help interns get to know people quickly, coworkers were given a meal budget each day to take an intern out to lunch. I am pretty bad at remembering names, so I was worried about being rude.

After lunch we also went to a cafe next door to the office for coffee. I even asked Ogura-san why he started the company. He struck me as someone with very forward-thinking ideas.

That afternoon I saw Mount Fuji from the office. Around dusk, a lot of people gathered by the windows to look at it. Ogura-san said Japan has an expression, “taifu ikka,” meaning the clear weather that comes after a typhoon passes. The storm really did move on quickly and gave way to bright sunshine. Taiwan’s southwestern air currents are a very different story.

While setting up my laptop, I learned that the company expected everyone to use vim. As someone who struggles badly with vim, I immediately sent a desperate message to Jason, my unofficial Vim guru, for help. Thanks to the resources he shared, I managed to do a basic setup and forked the Dotfiles repository.

Later on, I spent some time looking into Python unit tests. It is a little embarrassing to admit this, but even with two jobs behind me and while working on a PhD, I still did not really know how to write unit tests.

After leaving work right at seven, I wandered around near Shibuya Station and browsed Bic Camera. When I got back to Toritsu-Daigaku Station, I stopped by the supermarket again and bought a lot of ready-made meal pouches. At checkout I was asked whether I had a point card. I had wanted one, so I looked up how to say it in Japanese and worked up the nerve to ask the woman at the service counter if I could apply for one. She was so kind. She brought out the form and even helped fill it in for me. That is how I got my very first Japanese point card, and I was almost moved enough to ask for a photo together.