Greetings from Japan!

As a part of my dual studies, I’m currently in Japan for my practical phase at Nokia in Tokyo. In the “Studium mit vertiefter Praxis” (studies with additional practice), I do a regular university study at the University of Applied Sciences Ulm. In the semester breaks, I have the practical part at Nokia in Ulm where I work on real world projects together with my fellow students.

Uniquely at Nokia, we students also have the incredible opportunity to do said practical phase at basically any Nokia site in the world, and I chose the one in Tokyo!

Located at the 41st floor of the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, the view from the office is matchless:

As I’ve already been here for four weeks, I’m already used to the daily work-life in the biggest city of the world seeing many positive but also negative differences to the European culture I’m used to. As much as the Japanese love structure and order, and as punctual as their trains are, the amount of waste produced here (especially plastic waste) is incredible. Also, the understanding of trash separation is very different; while we seperate between paper, biodegradable, plastic and “the rest” in Germany, this all counts as “burnable” in Japan and is not recycled.

Japan offers an incredible variety of things to experience. The mix of high-tech advancements and deep-rooted traditions is truly almost unbelievable and very inspiring. It’s fascinating to see massive parks with beautiful shrines standing beside towering 40+ story buildings. And just a short train ride away, you’ll come across small houses and even narrower streets.

Here’s a very small selection of places I’ve already been to:

From the work perspective, this trip is also very interesting as I work on a product which will not only be used internally but will end up with the customer at some point. It’s basically a web-GUI for managing multiple of Nokia’s new Network Infrastructure devices. The backend is realized with Django while the frontend is built with React and Nokia’s official design system. It is my first web project in such a scale and it is a very nice opportunity to dive into these two frameworks.

As mentioned before, I’ve already been in Tokyo for more than four weeks now and will stay here until the mid of September. Afterwards, my two week round trip through Japan will start:

Kyoto - Hiroshima - Miyajima - Osaka - Kanazawa

Additional to these stops, I will also do some day trips, which is pretty convenient in Japan as the rail system is very good. Until then I will continue with my project at work, and hope to get all bugs fixed in the next two weeks ;).

Stay tuned for some updates from my journey, see you on the flip side!