Hi! I am “Michi” and I will introduce myself in this post! My last post (here) was in October 2020, so it has been about 3 years since I last posted. Time passes quickly.
Current work
I have been working with my current client since June 2020. I was mainly responsible for system maintenance, but now I am participating in development projects.
My daily schedule looks like this:
09:00: I start working 09:15: Meeting within your company 09:30: Meeting for the entire customer team 12:00: Lunch break 13:00: I restart working 13:05: Development PJMT (onsite) 14:00: Development PJMT (offshore) 18:00: End of my day
Currently, I work from home 4 days a week and go to work once a week. Recently, development has reached a climax, and we have many meetings. In between meetings, I receive deliverables from offshore and test them, and develop on-site batch functions. When I want to exercise, I go to the gym during my lunch break.
I moved
I moved in July of this year. There are various points to consider when choosing a place, such as rent, area, conditions of the building itself, etc. What do you guys prioritize? Apart from the points mentioned above, my deciding factor was that there was a supermarket nearby. If I were in the past, I do not think I would have paid much attention to this point. I am sure this is due to the fact that I had more opportunities to cook at home due to the coronavirus. The neighborhood seems to be a quiet residential area, but there is a school nearby. When I hear the lively shouts of students as they work in club activities or physical education classes, I feel a warm feeling of youth.
The view from my balcony
I went to Ise
I went to visit Ise-Jingu for the first time in a while. I was blessed with good weather, and visiting the temple felt very refreshing. I always forget the etiquette of washing my hands and visiting the shrine, so I imitated what other worshipers were doing. I bought an amulet to ward off evil spirits at the Kagura Hall in the Naiku. (Next year is supposed to be a “harbinger of a great disaster” for me, according to the mae-yaku belief in Japan). Afterwards, I went to Okage Yokocho to eat while walking and had a great time.
Picture I took from the opposite shore of Okage Yokocho
Please look forward to the next employee introduction!
In August 2023, we held an internship with two Japanese students and four international students. In this article, we will introduce the experiences of the participants.
Nepali international student (man)
The internship at Dandelions was a very enjoyable experience. I met people from various countries and became friends with them. At the same time, I learned a lot as an intern. Participating in this internship training provided me with an opportunity to learn business manners necessary in the world of work. I studied computer science in high school and came to Japan to study in 2019. I am currently studying IT as a student at Aichi Sangyo University.
On the first day of the internship, we had to decide on captions for the LINE stamps of the company. I experienced working as a group, which was really interesting. Next, we worked on making our own business cards. We had to write a short self-presentation, including our past, present, and future. It was not easy to compile information about myself, but thanks to that, I was able to know more about myself.
Translating stamps
On the second day, we had to taste sweets we bought and to write our impressions for the EC site. I learned that tasting the sweets and writing reviews about them was to make it easier for customers to understand what flavor, texture, aroma the sweets have.
Gathering impressions of the sweets
On the third day, we practiced exchanging business cards, which is not really something that you learn at school. After that, there was an explanation about web design. I had studied web design and HTML at school, but the explanations given during the internship were completely different from the ones given by school teachers who were limited to books. In the afternoon, we worked on creating personas and creating a website. I usually do presentations and university assignments by myself, but it was also a great experience to create something with my fellow interns.
Web design meeting
Korean international student (woman)
I participated in this internship with the goal of experiencing something new. I was nervous as it was my first internship, but I had a great time working with other interns and discussing about not only IT-related knowledge but a variety of things.
On the first day, we decided on the captions for the LINE stamps. Some captions came to mind right away, while others did not, but after thinking about it as a group, we were able to decide on captions that were suitable for the stamps.
Deciding on captions for the LINE stamps
On the second day, we did a test experience. The test consisted on checking if a website was working properly or not. It was a good opportunity to understand the importance and the difficulty of website testing.
Doing the test experience
On the third day, we did web design. I realized that marketing research and persona setting are important before starting a design. Through group discussions, we worked on creating a persona that could convey the charms of the Tokai region. Although there were some tasks that required specialized knowledge, I believe that by working together as a group, we were able to create a highly complete web design.
Web design meeting
The Dandelions internship was filled with new experiences, and I was able to achieve my own goals. I am glad that I was able to work on LINE stamps captions, web test, and web design, which I would not normally have the opportunity to.
Vietnamese international student (woman)
On the first day, we received an explanation of the internship
In August 2023, I participated in an internship with Dandelions. This experience was very meaningful and I learned a lot.
First of all, the actual work experience not only allowed me to implement the knowledge I had learned at school, but also provided me with practical knowledge that could not be learned from textbooks or classes. During the practical experience, I understood the importance of project progress management and team cooperation, and had the opportunity to improve my problem-solving skills during the week’s work.
On the second day, we tasted sweets and summarized our impressions on the EC site
Additionally, through communication with team members and supervisors, I learned the importance of manners and professionalism as a worker. I realized that proper reporting, proposal-making, and collaborative skills are essential to success in a workplace.
On the third day, we practiced exchanging business cards
The internship at Dandelions was a big step in my career in Japan. It was an experience that bridged the gap between theory and practice in the field of IT management, exposed me to the latest trends and technologies in the industry, and gave me an opportunity to practice my skills. I am confident that this will lead to my future growth.
In August 2023, we held an internship with two Japanese students and four international students. In this article, we will introduce the experiences of the participants.
French international student (woman)
During the internship, I was able to experience a lot of new things. On the first day, I was able to translate Dandelions’ Japanese LINE stamps into French and English, which was a very useful activity. On the second day, we tasted the Japanese sweets we had purchased the day before and I translated our impressions into English. Although it was an interesting activity, I was a little bit stressed as I had little time to translate everything.
Sharing our impressions while eating the sweets we bought
On the third day, I experienced exchanging business cards for the first time. Exchanging business cards is a part of the Japanese culture, so I was excited to experience it. I learned how to give and receive business cards, which I think will be useful in the future.
Exchanging business cards
I also learned a lot about web design. For example, when creating a web design, you need to think about who you are creating the site for and consider the concept of “persona”.
Deciding on a “persona” with everyone
From these various activities, I was able to learn how Japanese companies are organized, and I acquired new skills and gained new experiences.
Japanese student (woman)
I am interested in web design and would like to pursue it as a career. For this reason, I decided to participate to this internship as I wanted to experience how a website is created.
On the first day, we decided on captions for LINE stamps. At first, everyone was nervous about meeting each other for the first time, so it was difficult to formulate opinions. Gradually, various opinions came out, and in the end, we were able to choose the captions with everyone’s approval.
On the second day, we ate sweets we had bought the day before and discussed our impressions. I was surprised that my impressions as a Japanese person were completely different from others. There were some sweets that were not known by everyone, so it was difficult to elicit positive feedback.
Eating sweets and gathering impressions
Then, we did a test experience. The test consisted on checking on various files whether things that should be specifically displayed are actually being displayed or not. This was a very detailed work, and I felt like I was going to give up in the middle of it. However, I learned that if I do not do it properly, I will not be able to find computer or informatic bugs, and afterwards, I felt that it was a very rewarding work.
On the third day, everyone created their own “persona” and after compiling and comparing them, we created a common one. When I was creating mine, it was difficult because I had to think about various detailed settings, but when it came to putting it all together, I had to figure out how to summarize everyone’s opinions and make sure that there were no gaps in everyone’s understanding. I strongly felt the difficulty of group discussions and the importance of communication. Also, while listening to everyone’s opinion, I found it interesting that we had different views and ways of thinking.
Organizing our common “persona”
Then, we moved on to creating a website. We determined the roles of each person and worked to ensure that the work progressed smoothly. While creating the site, I was able to feel the joy of creating something. In the future, I would like to acquire more knowledge and skills and grow to the point where I can make everything from scratch.
Deciding on the animes to integrate into our website
I had a very fulfilling time by gaining a lot of knowledge from everyone at Dandelions. I am really thankful for this experience.
Japanese student (man)
As it was my first internship, I was nervous, but the employees in charge of the internship were kind and thorough, so I quickly got used to the place and eased my nerves.
On the first day of the internship, we first introduced ourselves. Then, we worked on creating captions for LINE stamps. We worked together to decide on the appropriate words for each stamp’s caption, and translated them into other languages. We also purchased sweets in order to write our impressions and to post them on our e-commerce site.
Translating the stamps’ captions
On the second day, in order to compile on the e-commerce site the impressions of the sweets we bought the day before, we sampled the sweets and summarized everyone’s impressions. Once we finished, we checked on the e-commerce site if the posts were not displayed incorrectly.
Tasting sweets
On the third day, we practiced exchanging business cards. I was so nervous! Then we started creating a website. We first had to decide on a persona in order to know for whom we will create it for. The design of the website was decided by a majority vote, and based on that design, we discussed which photos to include.
Exchanging business cards
On the fourth day, I wrote my impressions of the internship. I was able to write them quickly, but since there was so much to write, it was difficult to summarize everything. Then, we continued on creating our website.
On the last day, we had a presentation summarizing the creation of our website. I was so nervous when giving the presentation, but I gave my best!
Every year in November, each unit from DandelionS holds a report meeting on the annual activities. We set evaluation items for each unit, and each unit member and representative scores the results. The goals for each unit are as follows:
0th Unit
・Web trends investigation ・Corporate site, recruitment site operation ・About internally developed apps (jointly with the 3rd unit)
1st Unit
・Luckybox Blog ・Hello World Web version ・Sweets authentication app ・Attendance input API (jointly with 2nd unit)
2nd Unit
・Building an internal attendance management system using OutSystems ・Building a simple attendance registration function using a smartphone app
3rd Unit
・Internal server construction ・Security support
How last year’s presentation looked like
This is a great opportunity to showcase this year’s activities to all members. Please make sure to prepare well your presentation within each unit! The details of the report will be provided later.
For this engineer’s blog, I would like to introduce the learning content that I am working on on a daily basis. I am from the first unit working with themes such as AI and big data. This time, I will introduce a simple model for classifying images using TensorFlow.
TensorFlow is an open-source machine learning library widely used for machine learning and deep learning. It can be used for various tasks such as image classification.
To classify images with TensorFlow using the Python language, follow these steps:
1. Install TensorFlow
2. Load the dataset
This example uses the MNIST dataset. The MNIST dataset contains 60,000 training images and 10,000 test images of handwritten digits.
To load the MNIST dataset, use the following code:
This code reads the MNIST dataset and splits it into training and test images.
3. Preprocess the data
MNIST images are grayscale images and are all 28×28 pixels in size. Before training the model, we need to normalize the images.
To normalize the image, use the following code:
This code normalizes the value of each pixel in the image to a range of 0 to 1.
4. Define the model
This example uses a simple model. The model has two layers: a convolutional layer and a fully connected layer.
The convolutional layer extracts features from images. The fully connected layer classifies the image based on the features extracted by the convolutional layer.
Use the following code to define the model:
This code defines a model with four layers:
The first layer is a convolutional layer. This layer extracts a 28x28x32 feature map from the image.
The second layer is the max pooling layer. This layer reduces the size of the feature map by half.
The third layer is a planarization layer. This layer converts the feature map into a one-dimensional vector.
The fourth layer is a fully connected layer. This layer classifies images based on feature vectors.
5. Compile the model
To compile the model, you need to specify the loss function, the optimizer, and metrics.
The loss function is used to measure how well the model performs on the training data. The optimizer is used to update the weights of the model to minimize the loss function. Metrics are used to evaluate model performance on training and testing data.
Use the following code to compile the model:
This code uses “sparse_categorical_crossentropy” for the loss function, “adam” for the optimizer, and “accuracy” for the metric.
6. Train the model
To train the model, run the code below:
This code trains the model for 10 epochs (iterations).
7. Evaluate the model
To evaluate the model, run the code below:
This code calculates the model’s accuracy on the test data.
8. Make predictions
To make predictions on a new image, run the code below:
This code outputs the predictions the model made on the test image.
This was the first step toward image recognition. In this blog, I introduced the basic steps for training a model for image classification using TensorFlow.
