Internship Report, 8/26/95

Work continues much the same as it did before my last Internship Report. As you will recall, I was designated the official creator of Seino Information Service's World Wide Web information pages, and I have been doing a good job at it, though it is rather unfulfilling since they cannot actually be used until the company actually has a link to the Internet.

When I was first given the job of creating the company's information pages, I felt rather unqualified because I knew nothing about the company and my Japanese is less than native. So I began an intensive information hunt to learn as much about every aspect of the company as I could.

Though I was largely successful in my efforts, I soon realized that gathering and compiling all that Japanese information about a Japanese company in Japan was a job for a Japanese person, and that my greatest value to the company as an employee assigned to this task was my experience in page design, programming, graphic editing, and translation skills. So I began focusing on these areas instead.

As I did, my jichou noticed that I was producing good work and inventing new and better ways to do things. So he pulled me aside one day and said, "You know, creating these home pages is not that much of a priority. What I want you to do is create examples for everyone else and teach them your skills." Of course, I continued the task as it was originally assigned to me, but now with a new degree of freedom.

Basically what has happened is that, at least for a short while, I have become my own boss. Whether this is because I am regularly inventing new ways of doing things that others are benefiting from, or because I am just the token gaijin who is in the way, I do not know, but at least it has resulted in the opportunity for me to be as creative as I can be with the limited resources that are available to me in this technologically deficient nation.