Searching for software engineering internship in Tokyo, February to May 2027

My name is Victoria Ghoos, I am a BJA member and final-year Applied Computer Science student at Howest University of Applied Sciences in Bruges, looking for a software engineering internship in Tokyo from 8 February to 21 May 2027.

What I do

I work full stack. Python with FastAPI and PostgreSQL on the backend, React and TypeScript on the front, and C# with .NET from my previous internship.

In spring 2025 I spent three months at Vanden Broele in Bruges, where I replaced their SQL-based document search with OpenSearch across millions of records and built dashboards with anomaly detection on top. Their team took the work over afterwards with almost no changes.

In my own time I built Yorimichi, a route planning engine for Japan that finds scenic walking routes rather than fast ones, a custom A* search running over roughly 20 million OpenStreetMap nodes in PostGIS. More recently I delivered a bilingual English Japanese website for a marketing consultant in Yokohama, with a Sanity CMS so he publishes in both languages himself.

Portfolio: website
Code: github

Practical details

Thirteen weeks full-time on site, worth 24 ECTS credits toward my degree. The internship is unpaid; it's a graduation requirement rather than a job. Howest provides the tripartite agreement and handles the academic assessment.

I'm moving to Japan permanently after I graduate, and accommodation and commuting in the Greater Tokyo area are already arranged, so there is no relocation or housing for a host company to organize.

For the visa: an unpaid internship longer than 90 days falls under the 文化活動 (Cultural Activities) status of residence, for which the host company files a Certificate of Eligibility. This is lighter than a work visa, no salary requirements and no employment obligations, since an unpaid intern is not an employee under Japanese labor law.

Languages

Dutch, French and English fluently. Japanese at elementary level, working toward N4 and improving.

Contact: victoria.ghoos@student.howest.be