Hey there! I'm Yoshinori Ono, CEO at Lasengle.
Welcome to my blog and thanks for dropping by!
Well, the Nintendo Switch 2 has finally landed at the Park, the communication space at Lasengle's office.
The Park is an open space at the Lasengle office, used for everything from meetings to lunch breaks.
We like to switch up the decor with the seasons and it's a great place to relax and refresh during the working day.
It also includes an employee cafe where team members can grab a drink with colleagues for a chat, or take a quiet moment to chill.
There's always a gaming console running somewhere in the Park. From Super NES retro games to the latest PlayStation 5 releases, you can usually spot employees playing games in different spots... I mean, researching games... Well, okay, they're probably mainly having fun (laughs).
In the Stage Area there's a giant 163 inch LED screen where employees can battle it out in multiplayer games like Super Smash Bros, or Mario Kart World from the recently released Nintendo Switch 2.
With a job like ours where development and operational tasks are ongoing and projects have no defined endpoint, a space like this is invaluable to take a break and reset. It's also the perfect place for our Home Style employees to hang out when they break up their remote working to visit the office.
The Park brings together colleagues across departments, projects and workstyles, and we actively encourage initiatives that make use of this space as a hub for interaction.
If this sounds like the kind of workplace you want to be a part of, why not follow us on our new Instagram account to learn more about what we're doing.
From seminars and employee interviews to the latest career opportunities, we're regularly sharing information about who we are and what we're up to.
Check us out here: https://www.instagram.com/lasengle_recruit/profilecard/
Next, let me tell you about a game I've been playing recently: 7 Days to End with You.
Over the last couple of years, translation technology has made some mind-blowing advancements, right? I can't remember the last time I felt nervous because I couldn't understand someone, or thought I wouldn't be understood.
At the same time, it's getting harder and harder to experience that sense of accomplishment you get with learning a language. You really need to work at a language to feel like you're making progress.
7 Days to End with You is an adventure game where you progress by deducing the meanings of words.
You awake to find yourself in a strange place.
A woman you've never met before stands before you with a look of concern.
As escape games go, it's a fairly standard opening.
Where 7 Days to End with You differs is that the in game text is impossible to decipher.
The woman's speech, the posters on the wall, recipes, every single piece of text is completely unreadable.
When you first start up the game, you're faced with onscreen instructions that make you wonder if you've maybe purchased the foreign language version by mistake.
Before you can even begin to work out who you are, where you are or who she is, you can't even understand what's happening right now.
7 Days to End with You is all about deciphering the text to solve the game.
When you think you've understood a word you add it to the dictionary with a note, and the next time it appears, it does so with your memo. As you progress through the game, you collect words, guesstimate the meaning, make a memo, see how it's used in context, adjust your understanding and repeat.
You try to work out what you don't know from what you do know: "Maybe this is a number, and this is a color?" "Does she mean this? Or that?", and as you narrow down the meaning you gradually start to build up your personal dictionary.
At one point there was a mini game where I had to use an undecipherable recipe to cook a dish. I can't tell you how happy I was when I served it up and she told me it was delicious (at least, that's what I think she said!).
Play ends after seven days in game, but your dictionary carries over to subsequent playthroughs.
This New Game Plus feature means that on your next game, you get to experience those lightbulb moments where you're thinking "Ah! So that's what she was saying!" and "OMG, I can actually read what it says!"
During your seven days in the game, you're not just stuck in a room trying to talk to the stranger, you also have to make decisions based on weird dreams and dangerous events.
When you can understand enough to know you need to make an important decision quickly, but not enough to really understand what's happening or what choices are available to you, it really hammers in the importance of language learning - in a way that hits pretty close to home.
And that's my take on 7 Days to End with You.
Thanks for reading.
The next game is calling my name so gotta go--till next time!
Yoshinori X（Twitter）