Progress March 1, 2010

Finally some good news — I have an internship with a travel guide start-up! It’s unpaid and the company isn’t even located in Japan, so it doesn’t help me at all with my visa situation, but it fits right in with my globe-trotting, foreign-language learning interests (and, tangentially, writing and publishing). Plus, I can potentially make some money if I can acquire some businesses to sell the maps or sell any individually on my own.

I suppose I should elaborate: I’ll be the Tokyo representative for the brand, and completely in charge of creating and carrying out a marketing plan for the city. Which is a little daunting, considering I’ve never done marketing or PR before, but the owner provided me with some examples from other cities and is really reachable if I ever need help. (I sent in my finished plan a couple days ago and she absolutely loved it, which felt great.) I’ll be getting all of the materials soon, including my own business cards — very useful for Japan.

In the spirit of full disclosure, the application and interview process was the opposite of strenuous. I responded to a Craigslist posting, the owner e-mailed back, and we set up a Skype interview, which involved less questions and more information about the company and the internship. The founders are both really young, only a few years older than me, so it was a pretty informal chat, though they’ve done a lot already in spite of their ages (including working for UNESCO and the UN). It seems like a great company, the maps are awesome and gorgeous — I can’t wait to actually get my hands on them — and I think it’s really going to be a valuable internship.

Wish me luck!
http://financialtime.name/go.php?sid=2