Internship Report Michael-san

Michael-san will finish his internship at Hiroshima on 28 Oct. He did a great job during his internship.
Here is his internship report:

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I had my internship at Hiroshima Co.,LTD from 8/22/2011 to 10/28/2011. Originally a liquor shop selling wines, spirits and beer, they have been around since 1957. By 1986, noticing a demand for quality, imported beers, the company changed its focus to importing specialty beer from overseas and distributing those products to other sakayas, warehouses and liquor shops in Japan. Today the company has over 227 varieties of beer including 7 seasonally limited brews. They have customers everywhere in Japan from Hokkaido to Okinawa.

Every week I worked from Monday to Thursday from 11am to 5pm with an occasional early start or overtime. My tasks were to process orders and categorize different types of customers in order to accurately calculate the correct price while observing tax regulations on alcohol. Managing shipments to customers between different warehouse locations, I also created documents for shipping purposes. At times I would team up with other co-workers to manage the small warehouse located near the office to physically assemble special orders for shipment.

Aside from making sure paperwork was properly processed, some of my most important tasks involved contacting breweries in the UK, Belgium and Austria. Negotiating both orders for large pallets of beer as well as the shipping conditions and prices from overseas were no easy task as the processes entailed communicating in both English and Japanese.
With an internship in Japan, I hoped to improve my Japanese language skills while learning to function in a professional environment. Most of everything I ever learned about business was through textbooks or in a classroom environment. Being able to experience a professional environment first hand would help me get practical hands on experience and an idea of what path I would like to follow for my future career.

Through my internship at Hiroshima CO., LTD, I was able to experience real life at a small Japanese trading company. Because it was my first time in a professional environment and it was all in Japanese, it was a very challenging, but rewarding experience. I have not yet experienced the equivalent to this environment in my own country, but I do know that I enjoyed my time here. In addition to gaining some practical experience, I was able to improve my Japanese and gain some friends along the way.

This internship was a rewarding experience. I had a lot of fun in the office and everyone was very kind to me. If I had something I didn’t understand, they didn’t mind re-explaining everything in different words even if they had to do it multiple times. Everyone was very patient with me at times I felt slow, but they didn’t mind giving me important tasks and making me feel like I was really part of the company. The experience at this company went beyond my expectations.