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Diary of a Summer Intern - Erika
August 15, 2011
やあ！
Two weeks ago, I had my first Japanese Summer holiday, 海の日
(umi no hi)
or Marine Day. 海の日is a national Japanese holiday that celebrates the many benefits with which the sea has blessed Japan and is a time to pray for the country’s prosperity. This week was the only holiday of my internship, so I took two extra days off and ventured westward to Hiroshima
prefecture
. My sister flew in from
Boulder, Colorado
, and we spent the long weekend with our relatives relaxing and enjoying delicious home-cooked meals. It was really great to get away from the city life for a few days and enjoy the famous Hiroshima-style
Okonomiyaki
, one of my favorite Japanese dishes. The day before my last day of vacation,
Typhoon Ma-on
struck southern Japan. The local trains within the city shut down for the day and we waited for the storm to pass. The typhoon passed through Hiroshima within the day and then moved eastward toward Tokyo. Fortunately, Typhoon Ma-on didn't quite hit Tokyo and the trains were running back on schedule in time for me to make it back to Tokyo for work on Thusrday. The next day, I boarded the four hour
shinkansen
bullet train ride and watched the various scenery pass by at speeds of 190 miles per hour.
A rose standing eight meters (26.2 feet) tall
towers over Erika outside Google's Mori Tower office.
Speaking of the 海 (
umi
, or ocean), the Google Tokyo engineers and product managers had a big off-site at the beach in
Enoshima
last week. We piled onto charter buses and made the two hour journey out to Enoshima. It was a lot of fun to hang out with my coworkers outside of the office while enjoying Japanese-style barbecue, beach volleyball and of course, the beautiful water of the
Sagami Bay
. I also got to play the
Suikawari game
for the first time, which is a common Japanese game played at beach parties. The basic idea of the game is to split open a watermelon with a bat while blindfolded. Spectators try to direct (or misdirect) the player towards the watermelon lying somewhere on the beach before he or she takes a swing. If they're successful, we all enjoy watermelon! Fortunately, I was able to crack open the watermelon and my victorious bite of the juicy red fruit was actually broadcast on national TV and overseas—apparently, a TV network had been filming around the beach to capture an opening segment for the evening's nightly news.
Back at the office, a few more software engineering interns have joined the team. The Japanese academic school year just ended, so August will see an influx of new interns. The interns that I have met so far come from all over the world, including the U.S., Japan, Spain, Denmark, and China. I am so excited to meet more of my fellow interns and we already have fun events planned, like our upcoming hackathon. However, the start of August means that my internship is nearing its end date. It has been a fantastic past few months full of learning, adventure and new people. As I wrap up my internship, the next few weeks will be an intense roller coaster ride of finishing my projects, visiting the Mountain View, Calif. headquarters for a business trip and getting ready to move back home to the U.S.
Off to San Francisco! I’ll update you on my trip to headquarters in my next blog post.
いってきます。
エリカ
Fun Google Fact: Google Japan won #1 in the
Great Place to Work
2011 Survey! We got awesome shirts to commemorate the occasion.
Posted by Jessica Safir, University Programs Coordinator
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