Filed under: JET
Good things have happened since I last wrote. I found out I have been placed in Iida City of Nagano Prefecture, which is remarkably the exact same city I studied abroad in last summer. This wasn’t a coincidence, no, I did request to be placed in this city, but since when did JET (or any program) give applicants what they wanted? I always envisioned JET as a “beggars can’t be choosers” type program, but since Iida’s not at the top of many people’s list (most Japanese people don’t know this city) there probably wasn’t an abundance of requests the Board of Education had to wade through.
Since I studied abroad in this city for two months last summer, I’m feeling relieved. First off, I visited both Fuetsu High School and Osahime High School, the two schools in which I will be working, last summer so there will be no shock in finding out that Fuetsu’s on the top of it’s own small mountain that I’ll have to scale every day, for example. I’ve already eaten the food, explored the neighborhoods, shopped in the stores, spoke my broken Japanese to the locals, took part in community events, volunteered, taught English, etc. so there’s really no element of surprise as to where I’ve been placed at least, which has made this last month pretty stress-free. Instead of feeling like I’m going to some where far away, exotic, and mysterious, I’m heading back to my home away from home.
The greatest blessing about being placed in Iida is knowing that I already have a few friends and contacts already who will help me out if I need it, and have a few ideas for how to occupy my time off. In addition to wanting to improve as an English teacher, which will undoubtably happen being in an English classroom 8 hours a day, I want to improve my Japanese language skills, and thus want to get involved in a few community activities. I hope to join the Imada ningo troupe, who taught my study abroad group about traditional Japanese puppetry last summer, and practice with them during the school year. I want to attend the Japanese church I visited last year, even if it was a little boring. I’m also looking into the Iida Symphony Orchestra.
