cat profile --section about

Robot face drooling into a puddle profile icon

Profile

updated 2026-06-09

I am Yuichi Tateno, a Japanese software engineer. Online, I use the handle @hotchpotch. I use a profile icon that looks like a robot face drooling, with the drool forming a puddle.

I live in Nasushiobara, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan, a place that may not be familiar to people outside Japan. It is about 2 hours from Tokyo by car and about 1 hour by Shinkansen, a quieter rural area a little away from Tokyo. It is rich in nature, has sightseeing areas and many kinds of shops, and gives me enough distance from the city to work quietly on the things I care about without being pulled into too much noise.

Landscape near where I live
Landscape near where I live

Most of my current work is structured so that it can be completed almost entirely asynchronously. I do this because I want to keep fixed working hours limited and preserve flexible time for research, making things, and living quietly. I used to spend a lot of time on Kaggle and became a Kaggle Competition Master, but these days I spend more of my time on information retrieval and related research and development.

One of my hobbies is taking everyday photos. If you are interested, please see my photo index.

cat profile --section contact

Contact

If you need to contact me, please email [email protected]. I do not reliably check social media DMs, so email is the most dependable way to reach me.

cat profile --section links

Related URLs

4 endpoints

  • secon.dev
    role
    Japanese site
    note
    Technical writing and diary-like notes
  • GitHub
    role
    Code
    note
    Projects and source repositories
  • Hugging Face
    role
    Artifacts
    note
    Released models, datasets, and related artifacts
  • X
    role
    Social
    note
    Rarely used now

cat profile --section career

Career

6 entries

These days I spend much of my work time on IR (information retrieval). Through my own one-person company, I work on research and development in areas I care about, and I sometimes provide technical advisory support to companies where my experience is relevant.

I usually take on new work through friends, acquaintances, or trusted introductions. This is mainly because fit matters. I am more likely to be helpful when the problem is close to my experience and interests. If a project is unusually interesting and close to the technical areas I care about, I may still consider it.

Earlier in my career, I helped launch a startup and worked as Head of Engineering / VPoE, CTO, and CAIO at Japanese companies, including listed companies. Those roles involved engineering management and organization building. That experience still informs how I think about software and teams, but I am not planning to take on management roles now.

  1. Contract software development.

  2. Lead engineer and product manager for Hatena Bookmark, Japan's largest social bookmarking service, which served about 5 million monthly unique users.

  3. At Cookpad, Japan's largest recipe site and a company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange First Section at the time, supported the technology behind a product used by more than 60 million monthly unique users worldwide. Served first as Head of Engineering / VPoE, then as CTO (Chief Technical Officer).

  4. Founding member and CTO of WAmazing, a startup for inbound travelers to Japan.

  5. CAIO (Chief AI Officer) at Kufu Company, a company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth Market.

  6. Founded my own company and have worked on technical advisory and research and development for client companies.