Since November 2023, I’ve been living in Karuizawa, a small resort town that’s 70 minutes away from Tokyo by Shinkansen. The elevation is approximately 1000 meters above sea level, making the summers relatively mild. Unlike other colder places in Japan, it doesn’t get much snow, and has the same sunny winters I came to love in Tokyo. With COVID and the remote work boom, it’s also become popular among professionals such as myself who want to live somewhere with an abundance of nature, but who still need to commute into Tokyo on a semi-regular basis. While I have a home office, I sometimes like to work outside. So I thought I’d share my impressions of the coworking spaces in town that I’ve personally visited, and a few other places where you can get some work done when you’re in town. Sawamura Roastery 11am on a Friday morning and there was only one other customer. Sawamura Roastery is technically a cafe, but it’s my personal favourite coworking space. It has free wifi, outlets, and comfortable chairs. While their coffees are on the expensive side, at about 750 yen for a cafe latte, they are also some of Karuizawa’s best. It’s empty enough on weekday mornings that I feel fine about staying there for hours, making it a deal compared to official drop-in coworking spaces. Another bonus is that it opens early: 7 a.m. (or 8 a.m. during the winter months). This allows me to start working right after I drop off my kids at daycare, rather than having 20 odd minutes to kill before heading to the other places that open at 9 a.m. If you’re having an online meeting, you can make use of the outdoor seating. It’s perfect when the weather is nice, but they also have heating for when it isn’t. The downsides are that their playlist is rather short, so I’m constantly hearing the same songs, and their roasting machine sometimes gets quite noisy. Gokalab Gokalab is my favourite dedicated coworking space in Karuizawa. Technically it is in Miyota, the next town over, which is sometimes called “Nishikaruizawa”. But it’s the only coworking space in the area I’ve been to that feels like it has a real community. When you want to work here, you have three options: buy a drink (600 yen for a cafe au lait—no cafe lattes, unfortunately, but if you prefer black coffee they have a good selection) and work out of the cafe area on the first floor; pay their daily drop-in fee of 1,000 yen; or become a “researcher” (研究員, kenkyuin) for 3,000 yen per month and enjoy unlimited usage. Now you may be thinking that the last option is a steal. That’s because it is. However, to become a researcher you need to go through a workshop that involves making something out of LEGO, and submit an essay about why you want to use the space. The thinking behind this is that they want to support people who actually share their vision, and aren’t just after a cheap space to work or study. Kind of zany, but that sort of out-of-the-box thinking is exactly what I want in a coworking space. When I first moved to Karuizawa, my youngest child couldn’t get into the local daycare. However, we found out that in Miyota, Suginoko Kindergarten had part-time spots available for two year olds. My wife and I ended up taking turns driving my kid there, and then spending the morning working out of Gokalab. Since my youngest is now in a local daycare, I haven’t made it out to Gokalab much. It’s just a bit too far for me (about a 15-minute drive from my house, while other options on this list are at most a 15-minute bicycle ride). But if I was living closer, I’d be a regular there. 232 Coworking Space & Hotel Noon on a Monday morning at 232 Coworking Space. If you’re looking for a coworking space near Karuizawa station, 232 Coworking Space & Hotel is the best option I’ve come across. The “hotel” part of the name made me think they were focused on “workcations,” but the space seems like it caters to locals as well. The space offers free coffee via an automatic espresso machine, along with other drinks, and a decent number of desks. When I used it on a Monday morning in the off-season, it was moderately occupied at perhaps a quarter capacity. Everyone spoke in whispers, so it felt a bit like a library. There were two booths for calls, but unfortunately they were both occupied when I wanted to have mine, so I had to sit in the hall instead. If the weather was a bit warmer I would have taken it outside, as there was some nice covered seating available. The decor was nice, though the chairs weren’t that comfortable. After a couple of hours I was getting sore. It was also too dimly lit for me, without much natural light. The price for drop-ins is reasonable, starting at 1,500 yen for four hours. They also have monthly plans starting from 10,000 yen for five days per month. WhatI found missing was a feeling of community. I didn’t see any small talk between the people working there, though I was only there for a couple hours, and maybe this occurs at other times. Their webpage also mentioned that they host events, but apparently they don’t have any upcoming ones planned and haven’t had any in a while. Shozo Coffee Karuizawa The latte is just okay here, but the atmosphere is nice. Shozo Coffee Karuizawa is a cafe on the first floor of the bookstore in Karuizawa Commongrounds. The second floor has a dedicated coworking space, but for me personally, the cafe is a better deal. Their cafe latte is mid-tier and 700 yen. In the afternoons I’ll go for their chai to avoid over-caffeination. They offer free wifi and have signs posted asking you not to hold online meetings, implicitly making it clear that otherwise they don’t mind you working there. Location-wise, this place is very convenient for me, but it suffers from a fatal flaw that prevents me from working there for an extended amount of time: the tables are way too low for me to type comfortably. I’m tall though (190 cm), so they aren’t designed with me in mind. Sheridan Coffee and a popover \- my entrance fee to this “coworking space”. Sheridan is a western breakfast and brunch restaurant. They aren’t that busy on weekdays and have free wifi, plus the owner was happy to let me work there. The coffee comes in a pot with enough for at least one refill. There’s also some covered outdoor seating. I used this spot to get some work done when my child was sick and being looked after at the wonderful Hochi Lodge (ほっちのロージ). It’s a clinic and sick childcare facility that does its best to not let on that it’s a medical facility. The doctors and nurses don’t wear uniforms, and appointments there feel more like you’re visiting someone’s home. Sheridan is within walking distance of it. Natural Cafeina An excellent cappuccino but only an okay place to work. If you’d like to get a bit of work done over an excellent cappuccino, Natural Cafeina is a good option. This cafe feels a bit cramped, and as there isn’t much seating, I wouldn’t want to use it for an extended period of time. Also, the music was also a bit loud. But they do have free wifi, and when I visited, there were a couple of other customers besides myself working there. Nakakaruizawa Library The Nakakaruizawa Library is a beautiful space with plenty of desks facing the windows and free wifi. Anyone can use it for free, making it the most economical coworking space in town. I’ve tried working out of it, but found that, for me personally, it wasn’t conducive to work. It is still a library, and there’s something about the vibes that just doesn’t inspire me. Karuizawa Commongrounds Bookstore Coworking Space The renowned bookstore Tsutaya operates Karuizawa Books in the Karuizawa Commongrounds development. The second floor has a coworking space that features the “cheap chic” look common among hip coworking spaces. Unfinished plywood is everywhere, as are books. I’d never actually worked at this space until writing this article. The price is just too high for me to justify it, as it starts at 1,100 yen for a mere hour, to a max of 4,000 yen per day. At 22,000 yen per month, it’s a more reasonable price for someone using it as an office full time. But I already have a home office and just want somewhere I can drop in at occasionally. There are a couple options, seating-wise. Most of the seats are in booths, which I found rather dark but with comfortable chairs. Then there’s a row of stools next to the window, which offer a good view, but are too uncomfortable for me. Depending on your height, the bar there may work as a standing desk. Lastly, there are two coveted seats with office chairs by a window, but they were both occupied when I visited. The emphasis here seems to be on individual deep work, and though there were a number of other people working, I’d have felt uncomfortable striking up a conversation with one of them. That’s enough to make me give it a pass. Coworking Space Ikoi Villa Coworking Space Ikoi Villa is located in Naka-Karuizawa, relatively close to my home. I’ve only used it once though. It’s part of a hotel, and they converted the lobby to a coworking space by putting a bunch of desks and chairs in it. If all you need is wifi and space to work, it gets the job done. But it’s a shame they didn’t invest a bit more in making it feel like a nice place to work. I went during the summer on one of the hottest days. My house only had one AC unit and couldn’t keep up, so I was hoping to find somewhere cooler to work. But they just had the windows open with some fans going, which left me disappointed. This was ostensibly the peak season for Karuizawa, but only a couple of others were working there that day. Maybe the regulars knew it’d be too hot, but it felt kind of lonely for a coworking space. The drop-in fee starts at 1,000 yen for four hours. It comes with free drinks from a machine: green tea, coffee, and water, if I recall correctly. Karuizawa Prince The Workation Core Do you like corporate vibes? Then this is the place for you. Karuizawa Prince The Workation Core is a coworking space located in my least favourite part of the town—the outlet mall. The throngs of shoppers and rampant commercialism are in stark contrast to the serenity found farther away from the station. This is another coworking space I visited expressly for this article. The fee is 660 yen per 30 minutes, to a maximum of 6,336 yen per day. Even now, just reading that maximum, my heart skipped a beat. This is certainly the most expensive coworking space I’ve ever worked from—I better get this article done fast. The facilities include a large open space with reasonably comfortable seating. There are a number of booths with monitors. As they are 23.8 inch monitors with 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, they’re a step down from the resolution of modern laptops, and so not of much use. Though there was room for 40 plus people, I was the only person working . Granted this was on a Sunday morning, so not when most people would typically attend. I don’t think I’ll be back here again. The price and sterile corporate vibe just aren’t for me. If you’re staying at The Prince Hotel, I think you get a discount. In that case, maybe it’s worth it, but otherwise I think there are better options. Sawamura Bakery & Restaurant Kyukaruizawa Sawamura Bakery & Restaurant is across the street from the Roastery. It offers slightly cheaper prices, with about 100 yen off the cafe latte, though the quality is worse, as is the vibe of the place as a whole. They do have a bigger selection of baked goods, though. As a cafe for doing some work, there’s nothing wrong with it per se. The upstairs cafe area has ample seating outside of peak hours. But I just don’t have a good reason to work here over the Roastery. The Pie Hole Los Angles Karuizawa The best (and only) pecan pie that I’ve had in Japan. The name of this place is a mouthful. Technically, it shouldn’t be on this list because I’ve never worked out of it. But they have wonderful pie, free wifi, and not many customers, so I could see working here. The chairs are a bit uncomfortable though, so I wouldn’t want to stop by for more than an hour or two. While this place had been on my radar for a while, I’d avoided it because there’s no good bicycle parking nearby—-or so I thought. I just found that the relatively close Church Street shopping street has a bit of bicycle parking off to the side. If you come to Karuizawa… When I was living in Tokyo, there were just too many opportunities to meet people, and so I found myself having to frequently turn down offers to go out for coffee. Since moving here, I’ve made some local connections, but the pace has been a lot slower. If you’re ever passing through Karuizawa, do get in touch, and I’d be happy to meet up for a cafe latte and possibly some pie.

TokyoDev has already reported that Japan really needs international developers. But the more Japanese companies we’ve interviewed, the more we’ve realized that a talent shortage is not the only reason for Japanese companies to hire from overseas. There are a host of other advantages to recruiting internationally, and a growing number of managers are beginning to recognize the benefits. To gain more perspective on how multinational teams enhance their Japanese companies, we conducted interviews with the following businesses: Autify, which provides an AI-based software test automation platform Beatrust, which provides solutions to help companies maximize their human capital Cybozu, Japan’s leading groupware provider DeepX, which automates heavy equipment machinery Givery, which scouts, hires, and trains world-class engineers KOMOJU by Degica, a payment processor MODE, which pioneers innovative solutions to connect the digital and physical worlds Yaraku, which offers web-based translation management Below we’ve compiled the top reasons they gave for hiring international developers, and the specific ways in which those developers have improved their businesses. These range from the obvious—a greater talent pool to draw from—to surprising and even counterintuitive upsides, such as improved domestic recruiting and sheer enjoyment. The global talent pool Because Japan is suffering a developer shortage, and particularly lacks specialized and senior engineers, Japanese companies are expanding their recruiting efforts worldwide to find the staff and skill sets they need. That was DeepX’s initial motive for hiring international engineers: they needed employees with advanced technical skills. At first, when the company was founded in 2016, DeepX only intended to hire Japanese engineers. However, robotics is a fairly rare specialty in Japan, and those engineers who have studied it were reluctant to work at a newly-formed startup. Consequently, in 2018, DeepX hired their first international engineer; now they employ engineers from 20 different countries. Givery ran into the same issue. Though founded in 2009, the company spent five years trying to find enough staff to develop its B2C programming learning service, but struggled to attract talent because the company wasn’t yet well-known in Japan. In 2014 they received an application from a recruitment service, for an international front-end engineer who didn’t speak much Japanese. Since management was already discussing how best to globalize, they decided to seize this opportunity, despite the fact that many managers did not speak English. Seven years later, half of Givery’s development team of 120 are non-Japanese and hail from 20 different countries. The immediate benefits of widening the applicant pool speak for themselves. However Makoto Mizukami, head of Customer Engineering at KOMOJU by Degica, thinks recruiting internationally isn’t just a solution for today: it’s future-proofing. Because Japan is facing a declining and aging population, Mizukami believes that companies will face increased long-term risks if they insist on only hiring Japanese employees. In order for companies to survive, they must expand the range of people they employ. According to Mizukami, this applies to more than international engineers: companies must create an environment that can accept a highly diverse range of workers, including immigrants, women, people with disabilities, and the elderly. As will be seen later in this article, hiring international workers often has the side effect of creating a more favorable work environment for all. Recruiting at home But hiring international workers has a surprising secondary benefit: it improves domestic recruitment as well. KOMOJU found this out firsthand when they hired Shogo Ito as Staff SRE, since his primary motivation for joining KOMOJU was to improve his English. In Ito’s previous job, while he’d had the opportunity to collaborate with overseas teams, he hadn’t felt immersed in an English environment. But since at KOMOJU English is the primary form of communication, Ito felt confident he’d have a chance there to improve his skills. Givery has also benefited from this trend. It was their initial struggle to find engineers locally that led them to recruit internationally. As their multinational development team grew, though, they discovered that their diversity attracted more Japanese talent as well. As a result, Givery is one of the few tech companies in Japan to meet its recruitment goals on a regular basis. International knowledge Companies that hire internationally usually discover that their new employees bring more to the table than expected. It’s not just a question of tech skills—they carry with them fresh information that broadens companies’ knowledge bases overall. In the case of Beatrust, information from international employees contributes directly to their product. “We have a talent collaboration platform,” explained Dr. Andreas Dippon, the Vice President of Engineering at Beatrust. “The focus is [helping] employees better work with each other. Currently we’re focused on selling this product to big clients in Japan, which all already have some diversification. “Of course in Japan it’s mainly Japanese people, but you also have international engineers joining the big companies as well. So how can we support them collaborating in their company where there’s a language barrier, where there are cultural differences?”  Having engineers of different backgrounds, especially with our product, helps us better understand how users think. KOMOJU also credits their global team with improving their product. As every country has unique payment methods and financial rules, the “insider knowledge” of employees from that country has proven invaluable. KOMOJU specifically cited China, which uses a number of payment methods such as Alipay and WeChat Pay that are unfamiliar in Japan; according to them, Chinese employees have been extremely helpful in explaining those systems to the rest of the team. Mizukami gave another example of international knowledge proving helpful. A user who had a free Chinese email address was flagged by the fraud detection system. At that time, Mizukami said, a Chinese engineer told them that “People who use this address cannot be trusted, so it’s okay to ignore it.” With that engineer’s assistance, the team was able to respond to the situation appropriately. Other tech companies we spoke to cited the benefits of international knowledge more generally, but Cybozu in particular knows the value of global perspectives. An earlier attempt to take their product, Cybozu Office, to the US via a subsidiary failed—in part, executives decided, due to differences in business customs between the US and Japan. That was why, in 2022, Cybozu approached international expansion differently. This time they created the New Business Division, an English-first multinational development team specifically designed to help Cybozu adapt existing products to the global market. In addition, the team has been tasked with building new products from the ground up, with an international audience in mind. Staying abreast of new tech Another plus to hiring international engineers, and particularly those who speak English, is earlier access to new tools and technology. Ito at KOMOJU pointed out that information on new services and tools is usually spread through English online media, and that most Japanese engineers don’t keep up with English articles on the subject. This means that, until someone writes an “I tried it” style post in Japanese, information on the latest developments isn’t readily available to Japanese developers. Having international engineers on the team, who are accustomed to scanning the English-language web for new tools and methods, accelerates the process. In addition, since KOMOJU’s official company language is English, there’s no concern about finding software with a Japanese UI, which greatly expands their options. Ito explained that KOMOJU uses services that are not very familiar in Japan, such as JumpCloud, Tenable, Vanta, and Honeybadger. Takuma Tatsumi, a recruiter for Yaraku, confirmed that the latest technology is overwhelmingly in English, leading to asymmetry of information. Even at previous companies, Japanese CTOs would ask the international engineers, “What are the current technology trends?” But since Yaraku has hired a number of international members, they’re now able to keep up with the latest development trends and incorporate new technology when it is, in fact, new. Changes in work environment Most Japanese companies with multinational teams end up making substantial culture changes to accommodate international employees. This could be considered a downside; instead, those we spoke to agree that the evolution of their company’s work environment was one of the top benefits of international recruitment. “The advantage I can see is with a mix of mindsets and [thoughts on the] future of work from so many different places,” said Thomas Santonja, VP of Engineering at Autify. I found a lot of very, very rich discussions about what to do, what not to do, and why, and a lot of debate, which is at least in my experience rarer in a pure Japanese environment. “Canadian and American staff are the ones that are the most vocal about why and how to do stuff, and [they] try to engage to get other people’s opinions,” he added. “That actually created a culture which is not necessarily super common. . . . I believe injecting a North American mindset in the mix is very valuable for a Japanese company, from my side of the fence.” Scott Tullis, head of Global Recruiting at MODE, also endorsed a mix of non-Japanese and Japanese work styles. “We’re a unique hybrid,” he said. Thanks to our Bay Area origins, we have the Silicon Valley tech startup culture in terms of entrepreneurship and innovation, and we also incorporate some of the great aspects of Japanese work culture around teamwork and collaboration. “We’re fortunate to not have any of the more notorious elements of Silicon Valley startup culture here,” he added. “The term ‘bro culture’ comes to mind and is well known in the Bay Area, which we thankfully do not have at MODE. Rather, we foster a more collaborative, thoughtful, and humble culture where people are truly trusted.” While the Japanese side of the company has inspired an atmosphere of humility and cooperation, the American side has contributed a fully remote work policy which, as Tullis pointed out, “is a relatively newer concept in Japan.” “We have offices in San Mateo and Tokyo, as it’s still important to have face-to-face interactions to collaborate effectively and continuously build our culture,” he said. “At the same time, the option to work remotely makes our work environment very flexible, which is beneficial for many team members, especially working parents. Our team comes from a diverse range of backgrounds, so this flexibility is key to better meeting the needs of each individual.” When it comes to work policy, Dippon at Beatrust has leaned on his European background. “ So I come from Germany, with German work culture,” he said, “which is like, we take care to take holidays and take time off and don’t do immense overwork and so on. So I try to bring that culture into my team, which is often difficult, because especially [people from] Japan, China, Taiwan, and so on—they used to work lots of overtime all the time.” So when I told them, ‘Please take the day off,’ and they said, ‘Okay, I’ll take the day off, but I can work in the morning and evening,’ I told them, ‘No, take the day off, don’t come in.’ They were confused at first, but over time I think they adapted to some extent, and now they really enjoy it, and when they come back they come back fully-refreshed and eager. That being said, Dippon takes great care not to impose his own European work paradigms too much. In fact, he finds the cultural differences amongst his team members both fascinating and useful. “Every day is very interesting,” he said. “You learn a lot about their countries, about their work style, and you can benefit from their experience in their work style as well.” Like Santonja, Dippon has noted how international hires lead to a more open style of communication. “The culture benefit is huge . . . when you can foster open communication in your engineering team, which we have achieved now. . . . So everybody can clearly state their opinion and not hold back,” Dippon said. “Which is very different from Japanese culture, from what I’ve heard,” Dippon added. “Even the Japanese people we have, they like that, so they can clearly say their opinion without having to fear any rejection.” All three of the executives quoted above are, notably, international hires themselves. But many Japanese managers also cite the benefits of adapting their company’s work environment. In fact, Tatsumi of Yaraku compared the company’s international members to the introduction of Western culture into Japan at the end of the Edo period, which led to profound cultural changes. Makiko Nakayama, Yaraku’s Human Resources manager, agreed with this. Foreign members are very frank about the issues they face, which is why we’ve created an environment that’s easy for them to work in. Those changes include a new approach to employee communication and collaboration. When work output is low or the team runs into difficulties, rather than immediately thinking, “Maybe someone is slacking off,” Yaraku employees tend to ask, “Why is it like this?” and “How can we improve it?” They said that the chance to actively communicate and think of ways to improve together creates a cooperative corporate culture, which has become one of the biggest attractions of working at Yaraku. International hires also led to new policies around paid leave. As Nakayama explained, employees from overseas told HR, “It takes four days to go home and back, so even if I use my paid leave, I really don’t have much time to rest.” As a result, Yaraku now allows employees to work remotely overseas for 30 days a year. Likewise, DeepX reported that its foreign engineers enjoy their new holiday substitute leave system. This system allows engineers to take a lump sum of vacation any time they like, by treating normal Japanese holidays as working days, and granting the same number of paid holidays. In this way, engineers can take longer vacations when returning to their home countries. But according to Satomi Makino, the system isn’t just used by international hires—many Japanese engineers are happy to take advantage of it as well. I feel DeepX is a comfortable working environment that incorporates the good points of overseas companies. In our interview with Givery, they offered some specific recommendations to other Japanese companies looking to build multinational teams. They suggested starting hiring early in the formation of the company, before internal policies had been well-established. Their newly-hired international employees, Givery’s management found, had different needs and expectations from their Japanese workers. For example, international engineers made requests like, “Can I go to the gym for two hours during lunch?” or “I want to go back to my home country in December. Can I take a month off?” Because Givery didn’t have too many procedures in place, it was able to consider suggestions like these and implement more flexible, globalized workplace practices. If Givery had waited to build its multinational development team until its policies were more firmly established, it may have struggled more to adapt to the needs of its international employees. It’s fun It may seem like an odd consideration, but multiple interviewees cited an interesting reason for hiring international employees—it’s fun! Yaraku’s engineering team was born out of CEO Suguru Sakanishi’s question to himself: What would happen if I created a global engineering team in my own company? Before founding Yaraku, Sakanishi had previously been to the US and worked in an international environment. This experience made him realize how fun it is to work with people from various backgrounds, and inspired him to hire people from abroad. KOMOJU shared a story about a newly-hired Indonesian member’s introduction to Japan. In Indonesia he had a 10 megabit Internet line for 6,000 yen a month; then he learned that in Japan, he could get a 10 gigabit line for the same price. The new hire was so surprised he exclaimed, ‘What’s going on?!’ The whole team enjoyed hearing that and sharing in his excitement. Members at KOMOJU believe that seeing and appreciating cultural differences, especially through casual conversations like this, is one of the unique attractions of multinational teams. Dippon, at Beatrust, describes this kind of cultural sharing as “one of the biggest pluses for me.” It’s so interesting, sitting together after work and talking about, ‘Oh, what’s going on in your country?’ . . . You get this kind of information in the news and so on, but you almost never hear from a person from that country. Conclusion For developers interested in working at Japanese companies, these interviews should offer insight into why Japanese managers are also interested in hiring them. Most businesses like these are looking for candidates who can bring more to the table than their work skills alone. They’re searching for applicants who can contribute the international knowledge and English proficiency that their teams need to level up. These companies also don’t necessarily expect candidates to conform to Japanese business norms. In fact, employees who forthrightly (but politely) explain their needs and expectations can benefit all the workers at the company, not just those from overseas. That being said, developers should be prepared to meet these companies halfway, mostly by being genuinely interested in Japan. It isn’t just a question of being willing to adapt to a new country: these managers appreciate the fun and interest of employing someone from another culture, so they’re keen to share their own as well. As Yaraku put it, they place importance on whether or not the candidate is specifically interested in this country, because that’s one of the greatest values that Yaraku can offer: “enjoying Japan.” To learn more about how you can work in (and enjoy) Japan, check out our job board or extensive library of articles. To continue the conversation, join the TokyoDev Discord.

In 2023, I scaled TokyoDev from a one-man operation to a team. The idea was to get some tasks off my plate, but while I’ve succeeded at passing off responsibilities to others, I somehow didn’t gain any more free time. This is because working with new people also created new ideas and opportunities, which I haven’t been able to pass up. In 2024, we saw the first fruits of this collaboration, achieving things I never would have been able to pull off by myself. For instance, we started producing Japanese-language content teaching employers how to build international teams, had a sponsor booth at Japan’s largest Ruby conference, brought the developer community and our clients together through events, and built an editing process that increased the overall quality of our content, and found new contributors who have written some extremely popular articles. As the year winds to a close, I’ve been reflecting on both these accomplishments and the challenges we’ve faced, and how they’re paving the way for what is to come. 65 developers got a job via TokyoDev In 2024, we tracked 65 developers who were successfully hired after applying for a position on TokyoDev. This number was down from last year’s 71 developers. Interestingly, while the total number of hires decreased, the number of companies that hired successfully went up, from 29 to 31. One reason for fewer hires was that several of our most successful clients shifted their focus away from non-Japanese speaking engineers in favour of fluent Japanese speakers. TokyoDev has always been most successful at helping companies with hiring talented engineers with little-to-no Japanese skills, and so with their change in focus, we haven’t been able to help them to the same degree as last year. However, another factor was simply timing. We count successful hires based upon when we receive a fee for them. The time between when a company posts a job to when we receive the fee is typically 3–6 months, as it takes a while for a company to interview candidates, make offers, secure visas, and so on. This means that, even though we currently have a lot of successful hires in the pipeline, they won’t be reflected in this year’s stats. For instance, while we had six successful hires per month in January and February 2024, we have nine projected successful hires in both January and February 2025 I’m optimistic about how we’re going to do next year. 60 articles written by 19 authors One of our greatest accomplishments in 2024 was establishing a repeatable editing process that has allowed us to create extremely high-quality articles. The top five articles by number of visitors were: How I Got a Digital Nomad Visa for Japan by Christian Mack The English Paradox: Four Decades of Life and Language in Japan by Tom Gally The rise and fall of D&D in Japan by Masaki Yanagida How I obtained a J-FIND visa in Japan by Oguzhan Karagözoglu Japan Needs International Developers by Rebecca Callahan The cool thing is that four of the five articles draw upon external contributors’ unique personal experiences, which allowed them to share information with our community that no one else could. Besides our English articles, we also launched a new sub-site that’s helping Japanese companies build global engineering teams. It’s still in its infancy, but we already have 18 articles for it, and we have some other great ideas for the coming year. 18 developer stories published We write developer stories to highlight the experiences of employees at our client companies to give candidates a better understanding of what it’s actually like to work there. This year, we released 18 developer stories. The top five stories by number of visitors were: Realising Dreams of AI and Japan at Recursive “We’re the first global team in Fukuoka”: English Evolution at Money Forward Bringing AI to the Construction Industry with EARTHBRAIN Becoming a Tech Lead at KOMOJU Succeeding as a Senior Engineer at Kraken 814 developers answered our survey Since 2019, TokyoDev has conducted an annual survey of international software developers living in Japan. The 2024 edition was the biggest yet, with 814 developers sharing details on their salaries, working conditions, and the technologies they use. I’ve had people tell me how useful our survey is—some even used it to negotiate better salaries when applying for jobs—so I’m glad it has continued to grow and add to the community. 2,800+ people joined our Discord server In 2024, over 2,800 people joined TokyoDev’s Discord server. This community has proved incredibly valuable. Not only has it helped people get their lives up and running in Japan, but it also has been a great source of inspiration for article topics, and a way to find potential contributors to the site. 7 events hosted In 2024, we continued to expand the in-person meetups we held. Highlights included a pair of events in Okinawa during Ruby Kaigi, an excellent beer garden in collaboration with WAY equity partners (at least I hear it was good, I got COVID the day before), and the launch of our TokyoDev Talks. 5 organizations sponsored TokyoDev owes its origins to the developer community in Japan, so it’s important to me that we use our success to give back to it. We have continued to do this through supporting the following organizations: RubyKaigi: The main Ruby conference in Japan. Attending the 2010 edition was what inspired me to start blogging on this site. Rails Girls Japan: Holds free workshops to help women pick up Ruby on Rails. Tokyo Test Fest: The first edition of an international software quality conference in Japan. Women In Technology Japan: A community that bridges the gender gap in tech and promotes diversity and inclusion in Japan. Women Who Code: This one was heartbreaking for me, as they went bankrupt almost immediately after our sponsorship. That community was succeeded by Women in Software Engineering Japan, where I’m serving as an advisor. 9 people contributed to our team Besides the contributors who wrote articles for the site or made illustrations for them, we have a number of people doing work for us on an ongoing basis. Daniel López Prat improved the infrastructure that runs the TokyoDev site, including adding additional monitoring and keeping our libraries up to date. Keiko Kimoto helped with translation and other administrative tasks, including helping us obtain a trademark for TokyoDev. Mathieu Mayer helped with product design, UX, and frontend development, such as refreshing our articles index. Michelle Tan conducted developer story interviews and helped with full stack development by building things like an admin interface for our clients to use. Rebecca Callahan interviewed contributors, wrote articles for us, and led our editorial team and process. Sacha Greif continued to refine the software that runs our survey, and helped with creating this year’s survey. Sayana Takagi acted as our client representative and led the creation of our sub-site aimed at Japanese companies. Scott Rothrock moderated our Discord community, wrote articles for us, and contributed to our editorial team and process. Looking ahead to 2025 We have a number of exciting things in the works. We’re in the planning phase of several in-person events and have plans to sponsor more communities, and are also working on a new way of connecting international developers with Japanese companies that I hope to be able to talk about soon. Thanks to everyone who has supported us this year. I’m looking forward to continuing to grow together through the next!

Given how many of us grew up playing classic Japanese games, it’s no surprise that people are keen to work on games in Japan. But what’s the reality on the ground? What skills do you need to succeed in the Japanese game industry, and what challenges can you expect to encounter? To find out, I interviewed a number of current and former members of the game industry here in Japan, for their thoughts on: What makes Japanese game development different? The upside of working on games in Japan The downside How they got started in the Japanese game industry Their top tips for success Conclusion Our interviewees hail from five different countries, work in roles ranging from studio head to entry-level programmer, and have developed everything from Nintendo games to 18+ eroge. Marc Trudel is the Studio Head at Wizcorp, a studio specializing in visual effects, porting games, and developing custom tools and engines for the Japanese game industry. He’s Canadian and has lived in Japan since 2009. Mathieu Siboulotte is a French developer hired as a game designer at the international creative company Studio No Border in 2020. Tristan Metz came from the Netherlands in 2024 to work as a game programmer at AVR Japan, an XR solution company. Minh Nguyen is a Vietnamese developer who worked for DMM Games, which specializes in erotic games (eroge), from 2017–2020 before switching industries. Jared Hays is an American who was employed by the Nintendo-affiliated company Good Feel between 2011 and 2017. He now works for a gaming company in the US. What makes Japanese game development different? Tristan Metz pointed out the most obvious difference: “In the Netherlands we tend to stick to only English, whereas in Japan both Japanese and English often tend to be required.” I also feel that in Japan there is much more of a hierarchy and emphasis on your position within the company. . . . I do think that even the Japanese language itself inherently makes interacting with people feel more formal. “This might also have to do with the fact that the Netherlands tends to have a very flat hierarchy for many organizations,” Metz concluded. Minh Nguyen doesn’t see as much difference in company structure. “I think in terms of team composition it won’t differ that much compared to other countries. We would have a product owner (the term is “director”) who makes initiatives for overall game direction; planners, who design game specs, feature, and gameplay-balancing; designers, who create art and models for the characters and environments and UIs in-game; and developers, who implement back-end or front-end. Testers are usually from outsourcing companies who do testing and verify behavior, and planners would also have to test new releases themselves.” According to Nguyen, the development process is about the same as well. “We would also use Scrum/Kanban to iterate development cycles, as seen in other software companies,” he said. What he has noticed is that Japan focuses on a different category of games. Games in Japan are mostly RPG-flavored [social] games that have characters and a lottery system called gacha to make money. If you are more into MOBA/FPS/strategy then unfortunately those are nonexistent here. For Marc Trudel, the real appeal of developing in Japan is the intense passion of those in the industry. “I had one client that’s head of R&D,” Trudel told me, “and we’re having dinner together, and we’re talking about what games do we play when we have time off, and he says, ‘I don’t play games.’ I was like, ‘Okay, so what do you do?’ ‘Well, I read about neurology in infants and children, to try to understand how the brain works in the context of gaming.’” “He’s not leading game projects,” Trudel added, “and yet he clearly has an interest in how those game projects can have a beneficial impact on younger people. . . . It impresses me.” That dedication, and that passion [Japanese developers] have . . . I don’t want to say it’s not found overseas, but here it seems to me like it’s so consistent. Everyone I talk to is going to have a story of their own, a focus of their own. But Jared Hays thinks that trademark passion can easily manifest as stubborn single-mindedness. “There’s a certain amount of, ‘If it’s not working, just try harder.’ “One of the biggest differences, and certainly the biggest in work culture, was that in Japan there was very little interest in improving processes. So it was, ‘Well, we made the last game this way and it’s shipped, and it sold, and we made money, so we’re just gonna make the next game the same way.’” And there was really no room to say, ‘Have you tried doing X?’ Or, ‘Yes, we made the game, but we did this thing that drove people crazy, people quit, everyone got burned out.’ It was not a good way to make the game. [They] just said, ‘Yes, but it worked.’ Hays offered an example: “Yoshi’s Woolly World was really built on top of Kirby’s Epic Yarn, on top of the tech stack that they had built, which was in turn built on top of a WarioWare game they had made. So those first two were for the Wii, and then Woolly World was for the Wii U. And as they moved onto the next game, the scale of the game and the things they tried to do got bigger, because players expected more. . . . So, Woolly World had no project management, no production, zero. There was no issue tracking. There was no schedule planning, nothing.” I went to school for both computer science and game development, and one of the courses that I found incredibly valuable was a course, not in the nuts and bolts of programming, but in software engineering that really taught working in a team and coordinating with people, communication, delivering milestones, all of the things that most modern devs consider the other 80 percent of the job. And they just had none of that. “If we could align our schedules so that people aren’t sitting around waiting for other people half the week, maybe people wouldn’t need to work overtime,” Hays said. “Maybe the director wouldn’t need to keep a sleeping bag under his desk.” A lack of project management was the biggest difference Hays found, but he also pointed out that Japanese developers are working with more limited resources than their counterparts overseas. “Japanese devs are really harmed by the lack of a Japanese Stack Overflow.” Because in English, if you Google a programming problem, there is an answer. And in Japanese, you Google and it’s just some random guy’s blog where he’s like, ‘Hey, I tried using Unity for the weekend and here’s what I found out.’ So there’s much less centralized information and information exchange between developers. The upside of working on games in Japan For some developers, the best part about working in the Japanese game industry is the games themselves. “My favourite thing about game development in Japan,” said Metz, “are the cool projects and opportunities it brings, which was also the biggest reason for me to move here. Japan is well-known for its famous games from Nintendo, Sega, Square Enix, and countless more. There are a plethora of opportunities in this country and that really excites me.” Hays concurred. I literally made a game with Yoshi. I would never, ever get that here [in the US]. Hays and Metz agreed that collaborating with their coworkers proved an incredible perk. “Like I said,” Hays told me, “some of the people who started the company were super veterans and were incredibly knowledgeable. And it was really awesome to get to work with most of the people, [though] not all of the people. So experientially, it was great.” Trudel has also enjoyed working with Japanese game developers. They know all the games through and through. They have really pointed opinions on what they think is good. . . . It’s a craft for them. It’s something they dedicate their life to. Sometimes, that dedication proves almost uncomfortable, at least for Nguyen. “The games I had worked on were all 18+. . . . During the title alpha/beta release they made the whole company playtest it. I had to play through explicit content along with the surrounding people.” Still, he was impressed by how wholeheartedly they tackled each project. “For an adult game title, the people around me were extremely serious and very committed to making the game become a hit. That was a unique feeling and experience for me.” It’s a bit different for Mathieu Siboulotte, working at a small studio with an international team. “So far, the working environment in my studio is kind of unique. We almost never do any overtime, we have some flexible hours and some remote work days. We are a very small structure of only four people, so we kind of come when we want and leave when we want, as long as we do our hours! For my project, my team is split between France and Japan, so my hours are mostly in the late morning until the evening, so we can share many hours together!” But like the other designers, he draws inspiration from his colleagues. “I regularly join a meetup of French game devs in Japan or the Tokyo Indie Game Show in Akihabara. It is great to test new prototypes and connect with people there!” The downside As for the downside of game development in Japan, Trudel mourns the vanishing culture of mentorship. “I feel like this is kind of getting lost in Japan,” he explained, “that senpai [older mentor] that’s going to take you under their wing.” Maybe it’s specific to the game industry, but I’m starting to see there are not a lot of people that even want to take those responsibilities—or for those who do, sometimes it’s going to be a bit more of a power trip. In general, he explained, game projects in Japan tend to lack both money and expertise. “They’re all built on custom engines, yet every R&D project is underfunded. And not only is it underfunded, but they just can’t find the resources to really do the job to bring their technological assets to the next level, right? “It’s true in R&D, and to some degree it’s true for game-making proper as well, where they don’t quite have the technical abilities to really fully [realize] their creative vision. So that’s really where we [Wizcorp] come in . . . to try to fill in the gaps.” Hays also noted the lack of good leadership. The mentorship wasn’t great, and people I was supposed to be seeking advice from as more senior engineers often were senior because they’d been there a while, and not necessarily because they were incredibly knowledgeable or good at passing that knowledge along. He explained that “Right after I worked on Woolly World, I worked on a game that was on mobile and on Facebook, and that was part of our foray into self-published first party IP. “It was me and one senior dev. He was doing all of the client stuff, I was doing all of the server stuff. It was in Unity, which I had used in school, and the backend was on Google Cloud Platform, which I had also used in school. And we approached a milestone that was like, it should be playable by now. We got to a point where the server was stood up enough and the client was stood up enough that they should connect and you could actually experience gameplay. “And we turned it on and the client performance was so bad, it was unplayable. And I turned to the senior dev, who, again, has been in the industry probably since I was born. . . . I was like, ‘Did you run the profiler? I looked at the profiler. . . . ‘It’s going crazy doing all of this sprite rendering, but it looks like you wrote this rendering code.’ “He’s like, ‘Well, yeah, that’s how you have to render the sprites.’ No, it’s a game engine. It does that. You didn’t need to do this. And so again, as the only server engineer, I had to take several weeks to rewrite the client because he had no idea what he was doing and didn’t attempt to find any of this information.” In general, Hays found, the emphasis on appearances undermined genuine efficacy. “Shortly after I started, the head of the programming department took me aside. [He said], “People don’t like that you’re leaving on time.’ ‘Am I behind on any of my work?’ ‘No, it just looks bad.’” This was the same head of the programming department who told me that the company wouldn’t hire female programmers because they would distract the male programmers. “Never mind the fact that probably 30 to 40 percent of the company is women,” Hays said. “The art department had no problem hiring them. The design department was fine. It was just the programming department.” Nguyen confirmed that most game developers in Japan fit a narrow profile: young, unmarried, and willing to put in any amount of overtime. “Once you have a family, things change,” he said. “Most game companies’ demographics are single and young people, often with little to no responsibilities outside work, and once your priorities shift from games to family you start feeling like you are an outsider.” The long hours in particular are difficult to manage, according to Nguyen. “There are crunch times before each release, and this can be stressful depending on how the project is managed.” My friend and I used to have to work long hours of overtime during the pre-release period. It can suck when people around you have no responsibilities outside work and happily put in the hours while you can’t. It was these pressures that led Nguyen to switch to a different industry. He also agreed with Trudel that the tech at many game companies is outdated. “There is an inertia to upgrade,” he said. “The most important thing in a game is not tech, it is gameplay and art.” As for Metz, he mostly would like to be paid more. My least favourite thing about game development in Japan is probably the low wages. Wages in Japan are a lot lower than in the Netherlands, but I have the impression that programmers have better financial opportunities in other programming industries outside of gaming. “I have the impression this difference is also not as big in the Netherlands,” he added, “but I could be completely wrong on that.” Hays encountered the same pay problem. “The pay is terrible. Just for reference, I looked up one of my old withholding slips from 2013, and I was taking home less than 4 million. That is bad. And I tripled my salary by moving back to the US.” How they got started in the Japanese game industry Some of our interviewees landed in the Japanese game industry mostly by accident. Trudel, for instance, originally came to Japan for the martial arts. Between 2007 and 2009 he visited Japan whenever he could, for anywhere between a weekend to several months at a time. “During [one of my longer trips], I would basically be training three times a day, five or six days a week,” he said. “I would just be dojo-hopping basically, to kind of get my bearings in terms of figuring out if I saw something in it. But what I ended up sticking to was basically the classical martial arts of Japan.” He finally moved officially to Japan on October 20th in 2009, on a working holiday visa. “I didn’t actually have the job lined up when I came in,” he explained. I had a little bit of money set aside. I figured okay, well, let’s just try to find a job. Now that I’m here [in Japan], I can visit people in person. You didn’t really have Zoom at the time. . . . When I started at Wizcorp, I was hired at the same time as one other person, but I was essentially employee number three.” “At the time I was hired as an engineer,” Trudel said, “and ended up doing all the IT stuff.” His official title was System Architect and Network Administrator. “And from there, once we started to move gradually into games from 2010, I started to take [on a] technical leadership position.” Having also served as CTO and COO of Wizcorp, Trudel became the Studio Head in February of 2023. As of now, he’s worked at Wizcorp for over 15 years. Nguyen also was always interested in coming to Japan. Our uni curriculum offered Japanese lessons and allowed the credits to accumulate as well, so I had studied Japanese and gotten my N1 even before my very first trip to Japan. A big thanks to my uni, which made this miracle happen! By contrast, Siboulotte chose the game industry, but not Japan specifically. He started learning game development with RPG Maker when he was 16, but didn’t study game development in university. “I thought joining this industry was impossible,” he said. Instead, he majored in international trade, while continuing game projects on the side. He then received a bachelor’s degree in cultural product marketing, which gave him the opportunity to join an animation studio as a producer’s assistant. “However, game development was still on my mind,” Siboulotte said, “so I decided to leave and start university again from scratch, to study game design, in 2017.” He got his lucky break with Studio No Border, an international creative studio that’s affiliated with the French entertainment group Ankama. “I joined this project in 2020,” Siboulotte said, “right before Japan closed in a lockdown. It was also my first ‘real’ position in the game industry.” I honestly absolutely arrived here by chance. I was just looking for my first gig after my graduation and internship, and this job happened to be the first one to give me a reply! “I applied on the website AFJV, a French website listing games positions in France or with French language involved, and after around four months of tests and interviews, I finally got a green light to come to Japan!” Hays and Metz were both specifically interested in working on Japanese games. While still a college student, Hays spent time in Osaka and loved it. After graduating in 2011, he returned to Japan and was quickly introduced to Good Feel, where he got to pursue his dream of working on Nintendo games. Metz told me there was a specific moment that clinched his desire to come to Japan. The final push to want to commit to the game dev industry in Japan was a 2017 GDC talk by Nintendo about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. However, Metz was also well-prepared for the move. “I have always been fascinated with Japanese culture from a young age,” he said, “and have been self-studying the language off and on for around 9 years.” Their top tips for success The most consistent advice interviewees offered: learn Japanese. “It might be obvious for those wanting to work in Japan,” said Metz, “but I think that game development in Japan is much more reclusive than IT companies in Japan and will require a very high level of language fluency.” Nguyen agreed. You need to speak a very high level of Japanese. N3 or even N2 might not be enough to collaborate effectively. From there, however, the advice began to differ, depending on whether interviewees thought that game development in Japan was a good long-term career goal, or whether it should be for the short-term only. “Be sure to get out of the industry while you are still young and you want to advance your career more in tech,” Nguyen stressed. “The game industry doesn’t usually put as much emphasis on tech as others and it is certainly not a tech-driven industry, so staying there a long time can be detrimental to your career.” If you value experience working with tech, plan your departure even before entering the game industry. My friend and I struggled a lot when we were trying to jump ship. Hays concurred with Nguyen’s advice. “Treat it like a gap year,” he said. “Spend three, four, five years doing this because it’s what you really want to do. And then probably take that and go home.” “I’m not going to say, ‘No, never do it, stay away, don’t touch it with a 30 foot pole’,” Hays also said. “But make sure you understand what you’re getting yourself into and that in all likelihood, you’re probably sacrificing some career progression and certainly income for the sake of this opportunity.” Above all, Hays believes it’s important to do your research before going in. I will say as someone who loves video games, loves Japan, loves Japanese video games, if you’re doing it because you have an idealized vision of what working on your favorite games must be like, then you should spend time looking at real-world information. “Look for testimonials of people who worked at [those] companies, look for information about the pay and the working conditions. Just because it’s your dream doesn’t mean you shouldn’t research the company like you would a company in your home country.” Trudel also emphasized the need for research beforehand. “Do visit first. Being a tourist is not the same thing as living here, but it’ll give you some idea.” From there, Trudel’s advice differs, because he’s more optimistic about game development prospects in Japan. It does require, he believes, a great deal of commitment and the willingness to adapt. Japanese society works very differently. The game industry works very differently. Every client is going to work very differently, culturally speaking, and you need to find a way to acclimate to that, and blend in to some degree. “You need to be able to find a way to communicate,” Trudel went on, “where it’s going to make things move in the right direction.” It can be tricky, he told me, but “it’s not impossible.” Japanese ability of course helps immensely: “I mean, the one big mistake that I made was not learning the language enough before coming here,” Trudel admitted. “This set me back some years.” But language skills aren’t the whole picture. “I know that for me, as much as I struggled with language early on because I couldn’t understand what people were saying. . . . Because I couldn’t understand, I had to pick up on nonverbal cues more and on all etiquette stuff a lot more quickly, just to not get into trouble. Basically, it made me pay more attention to things.” Language is not enough. Language is just the gateway to the culture, really. From there, you have to walk through it. “I think a good way to do that,” Trudel advised, “is to engage in cultural activities. It could be sports, I mean, you can go and join a volleyball team for all I care, but having these kinds of activities where you need some form of interaction, some form of communication, verbal and nonverbal, to be able to engage in the activity, will make a big difference. “Plus it’s going to give you a bit of a network, beyond just having colleagues at work.” Trudel is strongly in favor of all forms of networking, even before you come to Japan. “Reach out,” he suggested. “I mean, you have LinkedIn, you have Facebook, you have all these social networks where there are some groups for the Japanese gaming industry. Talk to people, ask questions, see what they’re about.” He clarified, though, that you’ll get better results if you focus on gathering information over clinching a job. “[Those who message me about jobs], every time I’m going to tell them there’s an application process and a candidate selection process, and I’m out of the loop there. “But if you were just asking about whether you might find something to your liking [in Japan], I’m happy to jump on a 30 minute call with you and try to figure it out and just have that discussion. I’m assuming that not everyone is going to be necessarily as willing to engage like that, but it’s just a numbers game, right? “You know, the more people you reach out to, the more people are going to answer back, and then you’re going to be better informed.” Conclusion While the experiences shared here have been subjective, two of the major points—the low wages and the need for Japanese ability—were confirmed in TokyoDev’s 2024 survey. The gaming and education industries had the lowest compensation, with respondents making a median of ¥8 million a year. 37% of respondents in the gaming industry always used Japanese with their colleagues, the highest percentage of any industry. So if you’re interested in being a game developer in Japan, it’s best to start studying Japanese as soon as possible (and perhaps to be independently wealthy). But if a conventional Japanese game company isn’t for you, there are also a number of international game studios that can offer a more flexible and English-speaking environment. If you’re both ambitious and determined, like Siboulotte, you might aim to strike out on your own. The [Japanese] indie scene looks huge, and it gave me the will to make my own indie game besides work. I am really looking forward to BitSummit in Kyoto to try and show my prototype at a big fair again! Wizcorp and other game companies in Japan are hiring now, so check out our game development jobs page. Want to hear more experiences? Continue the discussion in our Discord community.