Internships in Japan

Looking for more internships in Japan? Check out the most recent internship postings in Japan.

Below you'll find all of the companies that we've covered that may offer internships in Japan. You can also look at entry level jobs in Japan.

Zendesk

by Willy Franzen on October 3, 2013

A couple months ago I was raving to you about our web host WP Engine. While I’m still generally happy with them, they had a pretty big screw up a couple weeks ago. I worked with their support team, and we were able to find a resolution (though it took much longer than I would have hoped). All of the communications ran through Zendesk, which is “beautifully simple customer service software.” It’s basically a platform for managing all of the back and forth that is typically a part of delivering good customer service. Zendesk is based in San Francisco, CA, though they were originally founded in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2007 (they made the move in 2009).

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Tagged as: accounting, advertising, analyst, blogging, Brazil, California, customer service, engineering, finance, international, Internships, Japan, marketing, operations, sales, sem, seo, social media, software development, user experience, web development, Wisconsin, writing

Mercy Corps

by Willy Franzen on September 7, 2013

I haven’t developed much of an opinion on the Syria situation yet, but I know that there are some things that everyone can agree on. One is that we need people looking out for the country’s children. More than a million kids have already fled the war, and there was a non-profit working to help them well before Syria became a staple of the evening news. It’s called Mercy Corps, and it’s a Portland, OR based organization that helps “people in the world’s toughest places survive the crises they confront and turn them into opportunities to thrive.” (Here’s what they’re doing in Syria.) They got their start in 1979 by raising $1 million to provide aid in Cambodia, and ever since they’ve been doing work all over the world.

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Tagged as: education, international, international development, Internships, investment, Japan, non-profit, Oregon, program development, relief, research, unpaid

Crunchyroll

by Willy Franzen on August 16, 2013

I’m fascinated by Japan. I’ve never been there, but my wife and I are planning a trip there for our honeymoon. There’s an intensity to the culture that I absolutely love, but there are also some things I just don’t get. Pepsi flavored Cheetos is one, and anime is another. In case you didn’t know, anime is the Japanese word for animation. But here in the U.S. it’s typically used to describe “a Japanese-disseminated animation style often characterized by colorful graphics, vibrant characters and fantastic themes” (at least that’s what Wikipedia says). While anime isn’t for me, A LOT of people love it–and most of them are adults. Crunchyroll is a San Francisco, CA and Tokyo, Japan based company that caters to this audience by offering “the leading global video service for Japanese Anime and Asian media.”

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Tagged as: animation, bilingual, brand management, customer service, design, events, international, Internships, Japan, marketing, media, mobile, software development, translation, user experience, web development

btrax

by Willy Franzen on June 3, 2013

Amy and I are headed to Japan for our honeymoon, but not yet. We decided to take short, domestic trip to relax after the wedding, and we’ll do the real honeymoon sometime early next year. Japan isn’t the most traditional destination for a romantic trip, but we’re excited by the prospect of experiencing a country that is radically different in terms of culture, but relatively similar economically. While experiencing the difference between Eastern and Western culture makes for a great adventure, it can be a huge business challenge. btrax is a San Francisco, CA based company that helps clients overcome those challenges as a “cross‐cultural consulting, branding and marketing agency focused on the US and Asian markets.”

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Tagged as: account management, advertising, bilingual, business development, California, China, design, international, Internships, Japan, marketing, project management, sales, software development, web development

UNIQLO

by Willy Franzen on January 3, 2013

I’ve always wanted to visit Japan. While the country is economically and technologically very similar to the U.S., it seems to be completely different culturally. I might get a chance to go there for my honeymoon (it’s one place that we’re considering), but until then I’ll have to enjoy Japan through its imports to the U.S. One of the latest is UNIQLO, a “brand has evolved from a chain of roadside stores to an international leader in style, quality, and fun.” I’ve never been inside one of their stores, but it seems that they’re about to start popping up all over the place (the first U.S. based store was in New York, NY, which is also where UNIQLO’s U.S. operations are based out of). From what I can tell, UNIQLO is targeting a similar market to American Apparel, though UNIQLO believes that their clothes set them “apart from apparel companies whose sole purpose is the pursuit of fashion trends.”

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Tagged as: administrative, apparel, fashion, human resources, international, Internships, Japan, marketing, New York, retail, rotation program

GREE

by Willy Franzen on February 24, 2012

There’s no doubt that Japanese companies have been and continue to be leaders in the gaming industry. Nintendo, Sega, and Sony are some of the names that you’re most likely to recognize, but it’s very clear that the old guard of gaming is facing stiff competition from upstarts like Zynga and ngmoco that are focusing on mobile and social gaming. While Japan has historically been big on console gaming, they’re not missing out on this trend. GREE is a Japanese that is fervently entering the U.S. market in order to grow a business that generated $1.7 billion in revenue last year. GREE is unique in that their U.S. based branding has been more about hiring than games. They’ve opened a San Francisco, CA office that they’re promoting heavily with billboards, referral bonuses, and even Google AdWords campaigns. They also acquired a company called OpenFeint to speed along the growth.

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Tagged as: analyst, arts, bilingual, business development, California, community management, copywriting, design, game design, graphic design, human resources, information technology, international, Internships, Japan, marketing, mobile, operations, paid, product management, recruiting, social media, social networking, software development, strategy, video games, web development, wrting

Octagon

by Willy Franzen on April 11, 2011

Cornell students! I will be in Ithaca from this Thursday through next Monday for the Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration. E-mail me at willy@onedayonejob.com. I’d love to meet up with as many readers as possible. I’ll also be meeting with ILR students one-on-one on Monday 4/18. Contact ILR Career Services if you’re interested in signing up.

Usually when readers recommend companies, I put them on my list and cover them soon after if they look interesting and have relevant opportunities. Lately I’ve had two readers mention that they applied to Octagon, but I somehow overlooked the company. My only excuse is that I’m often skeptical of sports and entertainment marketing companies because there are so many sports marketing internship scams. But that’s very clearly not the case with Octagon, they’ve been around since 1983 and they have offices all across the world. As they put it, they’re “the recognized, global thought leader in passion-based, sports & entertainment marketing.” Some of people they represent are Chris Paul, Michael Phelps, Randy Johnson, John Elway, Elena Dementieva, Landry Fields, Michael Johnson, Anna Kournikova, Apolo Anton Ohno, and many more huge names.

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Tagged as: account management, Argentina, Arkansas, Australia, automotive, baseball, basketball, bilingual, brand management, Brazil, California, Canada, China, communications, Connecticut, design, entertainment, events, finance, Florida, football, France, Georgia, Germany, golf, graphic design, hockey, Illinois, India, interactive media, international, Internships, Japan, journalismw, Logistics, Maine, marketing, media, Minnesota, music, New York, North Carolina, paid, public relations, qatar, Russia, sales, Singapore, social media, south africa, Spain, sports, Sweden, telecommunications, turkey, united kingdom, unpaid, Virginia, web development, writing

Room to Read

by Willy Franzen on April 9, 2011

It’s hard to find a kid in the United States who doesn’t take school for granted. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I actually wanted to go to school in the morning, yet I had classrooms with computers, books, great teachers and more. In the developing world schools barely have any books or even decent structures to teach lessons in, yet the students are filled with enthusiasm. Room to Read is a San Francisco, CA based non-profit that “seeks to transform the lives of millions of children in developing countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education.” It all started in Nepal when a Microsoft executive named John Wood who was traveling in Nepal and invited into a school in a small village. He was alarmed by how little they had to work with, so he quit his job and decided to build “a global team to work with rural villages to build sustainable solutions to their educational challenges.”

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Tagged as: California, communications, community development, development, education, finance, international, international development, Internships, Japan, Laos, law, marketing, New York, non-profit, paid, program development, south africa, Vietnam

Opening Ceremony

by Willy Franzen on February 22, 2011

The Washington Media Scholars Program has been sponsoring One Day, One Internship for the past week (and will be for the next week) because they want you to know about their case competition. It’s great preparation for a career in Strategic Media Research, Planning and Management, and you can even win a $3,000 scholarship.

Fast Company’s list of The 2011 Most Innovative Companies has a great mix of familiar and unfamiliar names. One of the companies on the list that I’m only recently familiar with is Opening Ceremony. They call themselves “a multifaceted retail environment comprised of shops, showroom, and private label collection that establishes a new, international creative forum in downtown Manhattan.” I first heard about Opening Ceremony because they’ve been collaborating on a line with Pendleton (a brand that I love). As I’d put it, Opening Ceremony is a New York, NY based fashion retailer/designer/curator. They’re all about bringing together things that are different—new and old, exotic and local. It’s based on the premise behind the original Olympics in 1896—”creatively merging sports, business, and global participation.” But it’s fashion instead of sports.

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Tagged as: apparel, blogging, buyer, California, copywriting, design, e-commerce, fashion, graph, graphic design, international, Internships, Japan, New York, online marketing, production, retail, sales, social media, writing

Wieden + Kennedy

by Willy Franzen on February 7, 2011

I don’t know when people started to think that other people care what they think of Super Bowl commercials, but it seems that everyone with a Twitter account is now an advertising expert. Considering the fact that I have a Twitter account, I guess I should give you all my opinion on some of last night’s ads (at least I’m kinda sorta in the advertising/media industry). First, I really liked the Groupon spots—I thought they were hilarious and did a great job of poking fun at consumerism. Still, they didn’t explain the joke as well as they could have, and it backfired (but all that press is great for brand recognition). However, my favorite ad was Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit.” Maybe it’s just because my family ties give me a soft spot for the Motor City, but I think that Portland, OR based Wieden + Kennedy knocked it out of Comerica Park with this one. It was two minutes long (which costs $8+ million) and featured Eminem. Even better, it told a story and made me want to buy an American car—maybe even a Chrysler.

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Tagged as: account management, advertising, analyst, arts, China, copywriting, design, entertainment, finance, India, international, Internships, Japan, media planner, Netherlands, New York, Oregon, paid, planning, risk management, sales, united kingdom

Intellectual Ventures

by Willy Franzen on January 28, 2010

One of the books that I’ve been reading lately is SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. It’s a great follow-up to the original Freakonomics, and it once again shows how changing your mindset can lead you to all kinds of new ideas (this is a really important lesson for your career). One of the companies that is mentioned in the book is Intellectual Ventures, a Bellevue, WA based invention company. They’re all about ideas. Things like product design, product development, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and service all come later, and Intellectual Ventures doesn’t want anything thing to do with those processes. They just invent, invent, invent. The company isn’t tied to one specific area—they’re working on problems like stopping Malaria, preventing hurricanes, and counteracting negative effects from climate change should they ever happen.

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Tagged as: California, chemistry, energy, engineering, India, information technology, international, Internships, Japan, medicine, paid, physics, product development, research, science, Singapore, software development, South Korea, Texas, user experience, Washington

Polaris Project

by Willy Franzen on July 25, 2009

I know that most of us were taught in school that slavery ended nearly 150 years ago, but, unfortunately, that’s not really true. Slavery and human trafficking continue to plague our world, even though most of us aren’t really aware of it. Polaris Project is a non-profit organization is not only bringing awareness to the issues surrounding human trafficking and modern-day slavery, but also combatting them. They do this by “conducting direct outreach and victim identification, providing social services and transitional housing to victims, operating the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) serving as the central national hotline on human trafficking, advocating for stronger state and Federal anti-trafficking legislation, and engaging community members in local and national grassroots efforts.” They’ve been at it since 2002 with offices in Washington, DC; Newark, NJ; Denver, CO; and Tokyo, Japan.

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Tagged as: administrative, advocacy, Colorado, communications, development, fellowship programs, information technology, international, Internships, Japan, New Jersey, non-profit, operations, research, unpaid, Washington DC

Japan Society

by Willy Franzen on June 7, 2008

If you’re still looking for a Summer internship and happen to be fascinated by Japanese culture, we have found some perfect opportunities for you. The Japan Society is a non-profit organization that is “the premier producer of high-quality content on Japan for the United States.” Why would a non-profit produce content about another country and culture? To increase understanding and open dialogue. The Japan Society was founded in 1907 and has been promoting exchange and collaboration since then. The Japan Society’s website is gorgeous and filled with information, so we’re going to send you over there to learn more about the organization’s mission and goals.

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Tagged as: editing, international, international affairs, Internships, Japan, New York, non-profit, social media, writing

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Internships in Japan

Mercy Corps

Crunchyroll

btrax

UNIQLO

Room to Read

Wieden + Kennedy

Intellectual Ventures

Polaris Project

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