Day in the Life of a Japanese Game Programmer

this is a day in the life of a Japanese game programmer this is masa 23 year old programmer living in Tokyo and working for one of the largest video game companies in Japan and this is how he starts his work day he lives alone in a typical Japanese apartment which are known for their efficient use of space like this enclosed unit bath with built-in sink facilities masa how long does it take for you to get ready for work? [Music] like most salary men in Tokyo he commutes to work by train door-to-door about 40 minutes so

it's not bad but more than half of this trip is walking to and from the train station not pleasant on rainy days like this all right so masa should be coming soon but the Typhoon's these months have been a really really crazy crazy dang! look the trains are super packed! crazy typhoon, right? so Masa works for Bandai Studios which is the network entertainment unit of bandai namco group they're known for developing popular game titles like Tekken Mario Kart and even pac-man and there's about a thousand employees in the Tokyo office spread across five floors [Music]

that's his digital timecard he's also, common in many Japanese companies is for employees to changer into slippers for their work day so this is Masa's office very common Japanese style desks with low dividers so Masa keeps his desk area simple, like many of his co-workers its very differently compared to western desks which are often littered with decorations and family pictures first thing in the morning, he checks his emails as well as the internal company's social network for updates while also having a quick breakfast Masa, where did you buy your juice? What is that? so Masa

is doing his morning tasks right now its gonna be some time before he has kind of like a break because he's pretty focused so let's go walk around the office and see what kind of facilities they have! so right behind Masa's desk, they a game corner kinda placed right here and they have the Switch, they have Playstation they have Xbox, and they even have some virtual reality gear I guess you get to play some games any time you want which is pretty cool oh wow, and just below here there's a big big computer I think

it's an alien war computer looks like one powerful machine alright so, this is their break room area on the second floor let's see what they have they separate all the trash they have your burnables, you have your cans and your bottles, and you also have your non-burnables like plastic they have a hot water pot and a mircowave so this behind me is their snack corner but it runs on the honor system so basically, at the top you have a place where you deposit money other different chocolates or candies they have a price for it and

even the refrigerator has frozen treats like ice cream, and what not and you just need to pay on the honor system and you take what you actually paid for I don't know how this would do in your country's office? Alright so, let's check what's down here so this place says Library but in fact, its not a library of books its a library of games, check this out so they have all these different consoles all the way from like nintendo to PC Engine, I don't even know what that is game cube and the original SEGA Sega

Saturn even a family computer they have, like, every single game ever! and it's not just in this aisle they have this aisle and they have this aisle and then they have this aisle but this aisle actually looks like books they even have all kinds of game cartridges from back in the day Nintendo DS they even have like a baseball game Sim City I wonder how many years, it would take to play all of these games What's your favorite old school console? Because I'm sure they probably have it here! so this area here, is their administration

section of the office it's kind of like the business side of the company and this behind me, is where all executives stay so this area is a lot lesser than the common area as you can see, the offices are fairly reasonable with the president's room is fairly the same size as the other executives Finally! Lunch time ! so he is Masa's Douki which means a co-worker who started working at the company at the same time In fact, it's common for many Japanese companies to do mass hiring once a year for college graduates Just outside is

their cafeteria Food trucks come during lunch time apparently, the trucks vary each day but damn! that doesn't look like a pleasant experience waiting in line during this typhoon Masa, do you always eat here? so, is this the only office in Japan that's a decent option for lunch ITADAKIMASU is a customary term used by Japanese before each meal meaning let's eat or thank you for the meal looks like they have a little time before their lunch break finishes I wonder where they're going what is that oh wow, they take their pac-man serious here and like all

the games here it's also free to play anytime Masa, so what are you doing now? so I've kinda got some free time while Masa is working so why don't we spend this time and maybe go meet some people so apparently they have all their different teams of working in different parts of the office we're actually on a different floor right now excuse me so what kind of work do you do? What's Code Vein? so Code Vein is a dramatic exploration action RPG with animated characters in a challenging and dangerous dungeon environment so can you show

me? I don't think he's ready to show anyone the game right now but he's just asking some of those guys to prepare the game for me and they're gonna put it on the screen so yeah I'm kind of excited to see what kind of game it is wow this is an attractive looking game how long did it take to develop this game? he also said that at one time there was about 200 people involved in developing the game and even when it's released development is still not complete as they update the game based on user

feedback and create new downloadable content alright, this is kind of fun let's go ask more people what they're doing it looks like just over there and people having a meeting let's see what they're doing excuse me can I ask you guys some questions? so what do you do you? what were you guys doing just now? can I get a peek at where you're working on? oh wow, they have a real deal tekken 7 machine right next to their work desks I guess testing character functionality as part of a day's work for these developers or maybe

this is how they settle arguments in the office so it looks like, Masa is not at his seat right now he's supposed to be here but I guess not maybe he went somewhere let's go find out where he is oh there's Masa he's having a scrum meeting I believe he has this meeting every day for 30 minutes they review what they programmed the previous day it needs to be done today and share and discuss problems for the future and they use software to manage all the tasks and display it on the screen during the meeting

oh are you going to code again? so where are we now? okay so Masa has a full-om employee nap space at his office and he even brought his own heated steam eye mask he sure doesn't mess around when it comes to his naps What is that? now he's back to this coding again so basically this is what Masa does all day I mean from morning till the afternoon until the evening before he goes home he is programming like this in front of a black screen oh, he's going to the finance department to ask about expenses

so this is the second scrum meeting the Sprint review held once every two weeks usually they combine it with their first scrum meeting but due to scheduling issues with one of the other members they have to break up the meeting today it is interesting though that they use post-it notes to do their final review I guess sometimes analog is just better by the way, the meeting rooms can be booked from this digital panel here that's pretty convenient now he's finishing up his tasks checking emails that he missed during the meeting and writing a log of

today's activities yay finally work is done just a little over 8 hours but Masa says he does have to do overtime once in a while during large projects overall though that's pretty good for a Japanese company as many other places require their staff to work a lot of overtime hours which is often unpaid now masa's meeting up with his work friends for dinner OTSUKARESAMA-DESU is another customary office term often used to greet your co-workers a difficult translation loosely translated to mean thank you for your work and today is payday and it's Friday as well so

time to let loose a bit usually in Japanese drinking culture everyone orders drinks at their own pace while everyone shares the food groups split an entire tab equally at the end no matter how much each person drank or ate, also smoking indoors in Japan is fine as long as the restaurants are okay with it which is usually the case with izakaya drinking restaurants so masa what else do you do in your free time? even at work his PC desk is his go-to spot. Masa do you watch YouTube? well, I don't know much about Gundam but

I can tell from looking around he sure loves it so what are you gonna do for rest of the night? so Masa's gonna be doing this for another couple hours it looks like he'll be doing this until midnight so yeah this is what he does at the end of the night alright, that's a day in the life of Japanese game programmer what did you guys think? I actually have quite a few Day in The Life videos so if this is your first time I'll leave a link to the playlist and you guys can check that

out and as always if you want to help support the channel then definitely check out the Tokyo merch and if you want to see more Day in The Life videos and I have so much more coming so hit that subscribe button and the bell and I'll catch you guys in the next one