During my time in Japan, I was privileged enough to have the chance to work with Norihiko Hibino, a composer and saxophonist best known for his work on the Metal Gear Solid series and the Bayonetta games. His studio, Gem Impact, creates audio from everything ranging from games to toys, but now he mainly works in the field of music therapy through Hibino Sound Therapy Lab, which he founded. Recently, he started holding weekend retreats in Niigata, where his company is current

I promise I haven't forgotten about the blog post from Sunday! It's taking me a big longer than I expected, and I'm still not happy with it, so I decided to postpone it a week in order to write something that I feel better about posting. Apologies for the delay! Instead of a post, here's a few pictures I took in Niigata, where I went on a retreat that I'll be talking about next time!

Last time, I talked a bit about what the process of finding a new job is like for college graduates in Japan. Building off of that, we’ll take a look at some of the specific applications that I filled out for a few different companies, and some general recommendations for finding a job in Japan What kind of positions? My applications were for one of two entry level positions: in-house composer, or sound creator. Sound creator is the title given to someone that does both music

Although I initially went over to Japan through the JET Program, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out a way to get into the game industry. Being in Tokyo, I thought there might at least be a number of developer meet ups or other events that I could go to and break into the indie scene, but… well, that didn’t quite work. For some reason, I had a really hard time finding meet ups, and it felt like so much more of a struggle to meet new people than it had been for me back