My first work week has come to a close and I’ve been absorbing as much as I can about both work and life culture and expectations. I’d say I was fairly well informed actually about a lot of things due to useful resources I’d read on the Internet (primarily by Phillip’s nemesis) before coming but of course there are still plenty of surprises. And reading something and experiencing it for yourself are also two quite different things.
One of the other foreign workers at my office organized a large gaijin game developer meet up on Friday night so I thought it would be a great opportunity to meet some other developers who had gone through a similar process as I am currently experiencing. There was just over 20 of us who attended, coming from a wide variety of companies and countries. I believe there were people from Greece, Australia, England, France, Germany, Russia, and of course America. I think I’m missing a country or two as well. Quite a good representation of Europeans!
Good times.We went to a restaurant in Shibuya where you can pre-pay for all-you-can-drink beer. I’m not sure really what kind of food they were serving, it was a hodge podge of many cultures as far as I could tell, but there was plenty of beer. It was cheap too! Only 3000 yen per person… maybe like $26. Of course, no surprise, the beer left a lot to be desired flavor wise (it had quantity covered nicely). It was a bottle I haven’t seen before, namely:
“Malt’s Beer, All Malt Beer”Well, while Uncle Malt didn’t treat me too badly I’d have to give it a 2/10. It’s flavorless beer reminiscent of Natural Ice or whatever piss beer your local universities fraternities served during freshman rush parties.
With good people and entertaining conversation though I was able to turn my focus away from the brew. It was a good time. Thanks go to the organizer and all the people I met, I’m sure we’ll see each other again.
How many of those devs were designers?
Hrm… none that I spoke to actually. There were a number of artists, programmers, and people involved in localization. I don’t think I met anyone who was a designer but I didn’t talk to everyone in detail so I might have missed it.
You’re right, I don’t think there were any designers there either.
Good times though. =)