My name is François, I’m a french guy living in Japan for almost 20 years now. I worked 5 years for a big french automotive company as a System Analyst/Engineer somewhere deep in Saitama. Now I’ve moved on to a nicer setting in downtown Tokyo working in different big global tech companies.
Here are a few facts about me:
- I’m a co-founder of the successful french website MacBidouille.com
- It has spawned an english version at HardMac.com
- I’m bilingual in french and english thanks to studying at EABJM in Paris as a kid
- There, I also studied japanese for 9 years, but I could barely make a sentence before coming to Japan
- I graduated with an Engineering degree (major in Information Systems) in September 2004
- After that I worked as a freelance web application developer to pay for my numerous travels around the world, all the while looking for a good job in Japan
- I finally found it and moved to Japan in November 2005 with a 2 year contract
- I was hired in Nov. 2007 in that same big French company, working on R&D Information Systems
- In May 2011, I grew tired of the Japanese countryside and the lousy economic prospects of the automotive industry so I took a job at a software company in downtown Tokyo.
- Now I work at a big American tech company that underpins pretty much everything you ever do on Internet.
Other links of interest:
- My web presence portal (fancy word for “links to my profiles around the web”)
- Sunsetter, a little web app I made on my spare time to calculate when I can see the sunset behind Mt. Fuji from my window
- A post I made describing my job as of February 2009
- Inheritance Tax Calculator, a simple React app to estimate your potential exposure to inheritance tax as a foreigner in Japan.