I LIVE IN JAPAN / Charles MULLER / Engineer and Game publisher

September 2025 (VOL.215)

Charles MULLER

Home country/city: France / Normandy / Houlgate
Occupation: Engineer and Game publisher
Duration of living in Japan: 10 years
Why do you live in Japan?: For work

What is your occupation in Japan? Can you talk about your job?

I am a board game publisher in a company we created with friends and engineering electronics as a consultant. With my friends, we created Frenchy Kuma, a French-Japanese board game publishing company. We successfully released Tales of Kunugi, our first game, in Japan at Game Market 2025 Spring, with a very good reception from the visitors and plenty of new games are in the pipe. In parallel, I am also running my own company as a consultant for semiconductor and electronics.

Can you talk about your activities in Japan?

I am doing lots of things. Spending time with my so-called goddaughter (my best friend’s daughter, 100% Japanese family), playing games the old way around the table with friends, making good tea, chatting about trains with the old men at the station and why Japan is so cool talking about trains, going to matsuris, museums and exhibitions, hiking, resting at onsen and of course cooking and talking about food (French and Japanese do love to talk about food).

Which places in Japan do you recommend that foreigners see?

Go to Hokkaido. The whole island is absolutely incredible. The food is excellent, the people have a very warm heart and the landscapes are gorgeous. Hakodate is my favorite city in the country and the city enlightenment at night from Mount Hakodate is just beautiful. You may also climb the Asahidake, swim in Shikotsuko lake, getting frozen cold but happy as possible in any winter festival, eat seafood while seeing bears walking in Shiretoko, discussing about Paris’ metro system and repairing a blocked printer while drinking fresh milk in the middle of nowhere close to Wakkanai (no joke). Hokkaido always inspired me to be ambitious.

Are there any aspects of the Japanese culture or its people that you find bizarre or unique?

The concept of reconfirmation 再確認 in a professional context is still puzzling me. I understand what’s behind of course, but in general an engineer won’t change its answer and it either appears as a way to earn some time or a polite way to ask for a change of opinion when lacking of argument. Confirmation 確認 is enough.

After moving to Japan did you have any funny experiences?

Another story about Hokkaido. After a rare case of heavy typhoon over Toyako lake, where the lights turned off when I was in the onsen with 2 other Japanese men, I spent the night waiting for an evacuation order that never came due to the risky mountain side. I was supposed to give back my rental car at the train station and take the train to Hakodate, when the weather become better.

Of course, there is no train and I was the only person to return the car in the morning, with almost 100 people waiting outside the station. When the clerk told me that my car was the only available, I immediately put my hands back on it “I extend to go to Hakodate!”.
She answered that it would be possible but only if she can agreement form the Hakodate office.

Outside, in the mass of people waiting, a Japanese couple right in front of me, both a little over 60, looking to go to Hakodate. She was just exiting the shop saying to her husband there’s only one car available but already reserved. So, I allowed myself to join the conversation saying “it’s true, it’s my car, but if you want to travel with me, please feel free, we have to help each other and we all go to Hakodate”. She was so happy. He was not very well understanding the situation at that moment.

Finally, one hour later, the three of us were in the car. The husband agreed to drive the whole way, through a devasted land, the first time for me to see this. Small shop konbinis with no electricity anymore, fallen trees in the middle of the road, houses partially destroyed and local people already there to help and restore the infrastructures. I was so happy not to be alone in that car and we discussed about the crude reality of nature in Japan and how to keep on and stand still.

Writer: Minobu Kondo
Photojournalist in Tokyo, writing for Japanese and American magazines. Publishing an essay “101 of green stories” with the other Japanese artists such as Kosetsu Minami. Languages: Japanese, English and French.

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