Japanese version available on note.
Hi, I'm chatii @chatii.
I recently attended Laravel Live Japan 2026.
Here's what inspired me and what I took home from the conference.
Profile
Organizer of PHP Conference Kagawa
Encountered PHP back in the 4.x era
Freelancer
English level: "Can read reasonably well," "Can write a little," "Can listen a bit," "Cannot speak at all."
5/23 PHP×Tokyo - Laravel Live Japan PRE-PARTY
PHP×Tokyo - Laravel Live Japan PRE-PARTY - connpass
(English follows Japanese) PHP×Tokyoは、PHPやLaravelが好きなエンジニアのためのインターナショナルなミートアップです。 日英のライブ翻訳付きなので、英語が得意でなくても大丈夫です！言語の壁を越えて、PHP/Laravelについて語り合いましょう！ 登壇者も募集中です！登壇を希望する方はこちらからご応募ください。 登壇は日本語・英語どちらでも大丈夫です。 #### タイムテーブル * 13:00 - 13:30 受付 & ネットワーキング * 13:30 - 13:40 オープニング * 13:40 - 14:10 "Man...
phpxtky.connpass.com
I first participated in "PHP×Tokyo March 2026." It was my first time attending a meetup with international participants.
I couldn't speak English, but I hoped to be able to communicate somehow.
Back in March, David helped me immensely with translation, which made me feel a bit apologetic...
At the PRE-PARTY, I took the plunge. During the networking session, I managed to approach Victor Ukam, who gave the talk "Manage AI Prompts as Versioned Files in PHP," and said in English, "I have a question...!"
Well... communication after that relied on Google Translate, but I was able to overcome the "first hurdle." You could say I successfully executed <?= "Hello, World" ?>.
Also, it was great to see Ivan again, who came from Russia. I first met him in March, and I was so happy he came over to say hello!
5/25 Eve of the Conference, Gyoza Restaurant
Zumi organized an unofficial pre-party via the laravel-live-jp channel on the "Laravel Japan" Discord.
Participating in these "fringe events" around a conference is always fun. I had booked a hotel from the day before, so I joined in.
The real-time translation app that Albert Chen built was incredibly high-performance...
5/26 Day 1
...Actually, I couldn't sleep at all after the gyoza party. I already suffer from insomnia, and even though I tried my best to sleep, it didn't work.
So, unable to sleep, I was asking Claude for "Quick English phrases for tech conferences" and checking if my pronunciation was understandable using ChatGPT's voice input. Just trying to build some makeshift confidence.
A tech conference with such a glamorous stage felt very fresh. As a conference organizer myself, there were many points I could use for reference.
Furthermore, that real-time translation was a godsend. While I was occasionally concerned about the "Reconnecting..." messages, I thought I'd love to use a translation system like that in Kagawa—one that handles such specialized vocabulary.
Also, the international speakers were so good at "showmanship," smoothly handling live demos while delivering great talks.
After Party
I had one specific goal: to say hello to Matthieu Napoli. He was the catalyst for starting my own meetup, "PHP Lovers Meetup"!
To explain the background, I'm a big fan of Bref (running PHP on AWS Lambda), which he developed. In 2023, I heard on the user Slack that he was "going to visit Japan." After many twists and turns, we held:
"PHP Lovers Meetup vol.0 ~ It starts from <?php"
At that time, I never dreamed I would see him again. Then I saw on Twitter that he was participating in Laravel Live Japan! I just had to tell him, "Thank you for that time..."
And... I did it! I successfully said hello.
(Wait, English...? Well, just a little, maybe the first two sentences... I tried my best, okay?)
Also, at the smoking area, I managed a "multi-turn" conversation in English with someone from Singapore.
Everyone communicated with me in earnest, even someone with my limited English. I'm truly grateful. Just like writing code, I realized the importance of actually speaking it.
5/27 Day 2 and Post-Event
Due to the lack of sleep, I was in "energy-saving mode." I still managed to get a thorough demo of LaraCopilot and see a demo of Sentry.
After the main event, a group of us went to a bar on the 4th floor of the venue, Tachikawa Stage Garden, and later joined @asumikam's group.
We ended up at a HUB and had even more great conversations.
Before I knew it, it was 3 AM. Spending time together until that hour was a precious experience.
Final Thoughts
I want to be able to speak English so bad!
Also, for a while after coming back, my brain was stuck in "English mode" even when speaking Japanese.
Talking to my kids, I sounded like I was speaking broken, machine-translated Japanese. (Maybe other non-native speakers know this feeling!)
Thanks to Generative AI, we don't have to do everything ourselves anymore, but being able to use English "on the fly" still feels essential.
Above all, I just want to communicate more!
And someday, I hope to welcome international participants and speakers to PHP Conference Kagawa.
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