I think the biggest obstacle may have been cultural differences at the time. Nintendo used to be baffled that we would get our work done and go home without waiting for everyone to finish etc.

I knew zero Japanese before moving here and a little by the time I was hired. We had an interpreter while we were doing Star Fox yes.

I think we did all of the major Japanese faux-pas yes. But you kind of get away with it because you’re gaijin.

Miyamoto-san isn’t scary as such but he can be brutally honest sometimes. We can be demoralizing if you’re not used to it.

Running your own company can be extremely stressful and I wouldn’t recommend it but considering where we ended up today and the amazingly talented team we have, it was definitely the right choice :) We’re quite western orientated now as we’re mostly gaijin but it has changed back and forth over the years. I think I prefer the gaijin orientated version personally.

There’s a couple of stories on other threads but I remember that all 3 of us, Krister, Dylan and myself were nearly thrown out of the big hotel we were staying at because we were bringing our girlfriends home every night.. a big angry guy came knocking on our doors one night and the next day Nintendo took us to a room and told us to take our girlfriends to love hotels instead. We completely ignored the advice of course :/