JET Details

Japan’s Historical Earthquake
On Friday, March 11th, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit Japan. Many cities were hit hard by the resulting tsunamis and a nuclear plant in Fukushima prefecture sustained damage and eventually earned a nuclear warning level as high as the Chernobyl incident. Due to these events, the flow of knowledge of placements and such was delayed by weeks.

JET Placement City
I finally found out I am going to the Miyagi prefecture, to a city called Kesennuma, located in the northern part of Japan. This city was devastated by the March 11th earthquake, with supposedly 1/3 of the city submerged under water and oil fires from the port boats that lasted for four days. At the time of this blog, Wikipedia lists the population at a little over 74,000. It’s hard to find any other information on the city besides earthquake news, which sucks.

Still Going
I’m not as worried about going to my city as I thought I might be. I was more concerned with being placed in Fukushima, the prefecture with the nuclear power plants that are walking on uncertain grounds at the moment. Actually I’m super excited! I just finished an orientation today that told me a lot of what I already knew, but was still helpful. Hoping to hear from my predecessor soon so I can start buying clothes and things to bring.

細菌【さいきん】 (saikin) – Bacillus; bacterium; germ

Road to Japan: Recap of Previous Years

Kyoto
So, to remind myself, the first time I went to Japan was during my time at Mt. Hood Community College with Chiko Sensei’s (RIP) class. It was fun and I went to Kyoto. Met a lot of cool people, all of who I lost contact with after about a year. It was for 3 weeks between June and July of 2003.

NOVA
The next time I went to Japan was with a company called NOVA. NOVA was an Eikaiwa (English conversation school, lit. English conversation). Lucky me, I arrived right as the company was going bankrupt, and experienced it first hand, missing paychecks and living 4 months off something around $2,000. I was in a city called Fujisawa and worked in a city called Futamatagawa. I met some cool people there too, again, none of who I really talk to anymore, but such are the consequences of distance. I was there from August to November of 2007.

Korea and Again Japan
I spent a year in Korea teaching, then worked for a year trying to decide what I wanted to do. I tried going back to school for a few things that put me to sleep faster than anesthesia. To date, I’ve settled on nursing. Still semi-feeling the sting of not being able to spend a year in Japan, I thought I’d try my hand at going back. It proved to be a difficult endeavor. I tried applying for the JET program with a friend, but neither of us even managed an interview. I applied to a lot of places after this with either no reply or replies but no interview. I finally got some interviews but they were again for Eikaiwas, and I felt that if I was going to go back, I wanted to teach at a public school. I applied for Interac, an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) program, got the interview, and not much more. Bastards. After applying to Interac but before getting to the interview, I applied to the JET program again. My application this year was worse than last year’s, the attempt was a total blind dart throw… that managed to hit bullseye.

JET Interview
I got the interview which was awesome. Going into it, I had a bad cold that left me coughing every five seconds. I mega overdosed on cough drops in order to completely redecorate my throat with menthol. The interview consisted of 3 people, a former JET, a Japanese man who I think worked for the embassy in Portland, and some other guy who I don’t remember. The cough drop party worked for the most part and I got through the interview. A month and a half later, I got an email saying they had hired me. Sweet! To be honest, I was more or less considering JET as my last attempt to get to Japan. Lucky it was indeed, my last attempt.

節約【せつやく】 (setsuyaku) – Economising; saving