The special series to put a spotlight on our international staff, “Eyes, JAPAN employee interview” is back! As we wrap up this year, we celebrate the three-year milestone of this series! Our last interviewee this year is Luu Trong Nhan from Vietnam.

He has been working in Eyes, JAPAN for around 10 months. We wanted to ask Nhan about his life in Japan, why he came to Japan and what does he think about working in Eyes, JAPAN.

(Interviewer: Angie)

Love the Coffee Culture in Vietnam

What is your favorite thing about your home country / home town?

Nhan: Probably the coffee culture. In Vietnam, a coffee shop isn’t just a place to buy and sell coffee—it’s a space where friends gather to chat and connect with each other. This is evident from the sheer number of coffee shops throughout the country. Most of these shops are bustling with people who buy a cup of coffee just to sit and talk with their friends for an entire Sunday morning. This also makes the coffee business one of the hardest industries to break into. There’s a popular saying in Vietnam: “There are so many coffee shops here that you’ll find one every ten steps.”

Why did you come to Japan and what do you like about Japan?

Nhan: I first learned about Japan through anime, manga, and social media. However, I started seriously considering studying abroad in Japan during high school when there was an event near my area introducing Japanese universities. That was when I began thinking about traveling to Japan to “broaden my perspective” on the world.

Nhan: Some of my favorite things about Japan are the food and the scenery. I especially love ramen and sushi, not only for their taste but also for their cultural significance. I also find the landscapes in Japan stunning—they look very much like what is often depicted online.

Have you experienced any culture shock in Japan?

Nhan: Saying no is a lie. I was very shock when I saw a self-checkout section in a local supermarket, since self-serving isn’t widely as common in my home country as it is in Japan.

What do you think about life in Aizu?

Nhan: The word I would describe Aizu is “calm”. It is a perfect place if you want to avoid overcrowded cities and just want to relax.

What is your hobby and how do you usually spend your weekends or holidays?

Nhan: My favorite is probably video games. It’s a way for me to connect with my friends back in my home country. I usually spend most of my weekends and holidays to play video games with friends or going out and have a couple drinks with them in real life. I also occasionally travel and play sport or simply participate in some public event.

What is your academic background and what kind of research are you doing or have you done before?

Nhan: I’m currently doing my Master at The University of Aizu, most of my research revolve around AI algorithms and computer vision in general but I also have a bit of researches related to quantum computing and variational quantum circuits.

Do you have any things or skills that you are proud of?

Nhan: Well, I have a collection of soccer players cards back in the 2010s. There is like 200+ cards and to collect all of them you have to buy some kind of chips pack and each contains 1 card. I’ve collected about 78% of them while gain a bunch of weight and some digestive problem before they stop selling it couple years later :). Some of them are extremely rare that only have like 0.1% chance dropping rate.

EJ Staff: Nice, Professional, and Humorous.

How did you know about Eyes, JAPAN, and why did you decide to join?

Nhan: I learned about EJ through some of my friends in university. And I joined because I think this is a good chance to gain some experience working in tech while studying.

What kind of projects have you been working on in Eyes Japan?

Nhan: I mostly take on projects that require web application development, including both frontend and backend development.

Could you let us know about your most memorable project in Eyes, JAPAN?

Nhan: Probably KV project. It was the first project I worked on after joining EJ that have an extremely tight deadline (just a month after I join) and not a lot of people working on it. At that time, I don’t have a lot of experience in application development so I have to learn by doing, but we still made it somehow.

Which customs in Eyes, JAPAN do you like the most?

Nhan: I love joining dinners after meeting with my colleagues, I get to know more about people I work with as a person aside from project and technical related thing.

What do you think about your colleagues and the working environment in Eyes, JAPAN?

Nhan: Well, I think my colleagues are nice and professional, with a sense of humor as well. As for the working environment, I think that as a small company, we have a lot of room for flexibility. This humane aspect is hard to find at larger corporate where they tend to treat people as “factors and numbers in term of efficiency”.

What do you think about working at the company and working at home?

Nhan: I think that allow staff to work at home is a huge flexibility that only people who work in tech industry tend to get, as they let you cut down a lot of traveling time and sort out your personal business.

What kind of problems or challenges have you faced while working in Eyes, JAPAN, and how did you solve it?

Nhan: Probably solution designing in general. Thinking of an optimal solution for an application is difficult since project have limited time and resources, and optimal solution itself is also ambiguous since we only know what to improve after implement something and test it. While there are some specific design patterns online that we can learn from, it is also very limited since project requirements can be vastly different from given example.

Dream: To Retire and Travel the World

Can you give some pros and/or cons of working at a Japanese company?

Nhan: My personal take on this is that there are none, both pros and cons. There are only good companies and bad companies to work in.

How do you balance your working and private time?

Nhan: I don’t 🙁 Sometimes work and studying require you to spend more time on it and you have to cut down private time a bit. It is an unavoidable part of life.

What motivates you to keep working and studying?

Nhan: Well, we all have to make a living aren’t we 🙁

Any advice for people who wants to work in Japan?

Nhan: Learn Japanese. Technical knowledge can be learned relatively fast, but to fit in with the community and work with Japanese colleagues for a long time, good Japanese skill is a strict requirement.

What kind of projects do you want to work on in the future?

Nhan: I hope to work on some large and scalable application in the future (since most of the one I’m currently working on are for small scale server) or some AI projects (to apply what I learned in university of course).

Lastly, what is your dream?

Nhan: My dream is to early retire and travel the world, but probably not possible with my current financial status 🙁

Thank you!

If you are interested in Eyes, JAPAN and would like to hear other stories, please do not hesitate to contact us at the following contact form.

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Everyone welcome.