The first interview with the Japanese HR representative was lighthearted and casual. She wasn’t perfect—she made a few pauses and mistakes, which felt very human. This made me assume the next steps would have a similar vibe, but I was wrong. Next came the coding interview. The actual link to join the CoderPad platform was sent at the last minute, and the team link was never used. Right away, they hit you with a standard data structure problem. The interviewer gave off a vibe of 'I’m busy and good at what I do—if you can’t keep up, this isn’t the place for you' and didn’t seem to enjoy the interview himself. This is one of those interviews where you need to have been preparing your coding skills for weeks, if not months. A casual Front-End Engineer expecting more of a take-home assignment might find it tough to pass.