Trying to recap

Really tired, but I’ve been trying to recap the last few weeks and keep getting interrupted, so maybe I’ll just make this short for now and will elaborate on important things later.

Met up with 6 Atlanta-area JETs last Saturday–it’s cool to know that I’ll already know a few at the upcoming orientation on the 25th. And most of us were there for over 3 hours, so that’s also a good sign. We’re all over the country, and so far my predecessor has given me tons more information than any of theirs have.

I got my contract (really similar to the one in the Big Blue Handbook–it also finalized my salary and stated other terms; what I really like about the JET contract is that it’s really accommodating towards women, and even allows for menstrual leave for women with really painful/uncomfortable cycles) and some other info in the mail from the Ikeda Board of Education–they also included a couple of maps of the city, a few of Lindsay’s school schedules, and general information about Tokushima and Ikeda. Oh, and a run-down of the apartment…it’s furnished, rent’s ~¥40,000 a month (so around $400, but it depends on the size of the room), and I get 2 futons, a washing machine, 2-range stove, oven, kotatsu, toaster, TV, VCR, microwave, electric heater, air conditioner, and a fridge.

I also realized that if I want to go see my relatives’ weddings in India in December, I need a visa to get in…the last time I went to India, I was on an Indian passport.

We did a ton of shopping this weekend–toiletries and some clothes, mainly. Our big debate now is whether to ship stuff over in advance, and if so, what to ship…a moderately-sized box via UPS is something like $250 to ship, which is a lot more than I expected it to be. I guess I’d mainly be shipping a few plates, books, some of my toiletries that I won’t immediately need, winter clothes and jacket, and so on.

I’ve also been saying more goodbyes–the biggest one thus far was saying bye to Louise a couple of weeks ago, because she’s now up in New York for the next 1-2 years. I’m getting back in touch with people I haven’t talked to in a while, especially friends from high school and even before that I’ve fallen out of touch with, so I’m trying to sort of book my social schedule up so I can see as many people as I can.

It’s just under 6 weeks until departure now. I have under 3 weeks at this job, and after that’s through, I’ll have 3 solid weeks in which to do nothing but pack. And panic. It’s all beginning to register, and I really am wondering how well I’ll be able to handle this.

(wow, that wasn’t too long after all…I feel like there’s more, but I can’t think of anything.)

Redesign!

I got kind of inspired last night…instead of doing the telework and overtime design work I brought home with me, I decided to do something for myself instead, to help recharge after designing something like 6 landscaping sites this week. The image is courtesy of stock.xchng, taken by zaido, though s/he didn’t specify what castle in particular this is. The design should work in 800×600 and up, but it’s optimized for 1024×768 and up. I wanted to wait till I could use one of my own Japan photos, but I just wanted to get rid of the template first, so…yeah. ;o)

It’s seven weeks until I leave. I still haven’t started packing–but I mainly need to pack clothes. Mom bought some kitchenware for me, but I don’t know if I should keep it or just buy my own when I get there. I also would be taking keepsakes and memorabilia from home, my Japanese textbooks (and my hundreds of kanji flashcards, haha), and my violin and music (I want to pick up more sheet music before I leave, so I’ll have plenty to work on…I’m in the middle of two, the Kabalevsky violin concerto (which I kind of gave up on) and the Barber violin concerto (I can only barely play the 1st movement), but I’d love to pick up Saint-Saens’ Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso and Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending.

Anyway. :o) So…for the most part, that should be it. The apartment where I’ll be is fully-furnished, within walking distance of anything I would need, and I’ve been assured that the BOE employee that works with us will be more than happy to take me shopping to help me buy stuff. Another major concern of mine, though, besides the general strict-vegetarian-in-Japan thing (though as long as I just constantly cook for myself, I ought to be okay), is that the washing machine and dryer there will shrink my clothes–and while I’m certainly not huge, I don’t think that adult-large in the US is quite the same as it is in Japan.

I’m actually meeting my best friend for lunch in an hour at Ru-san’s (an ueber-Americanized chain of Japanese restaurants…I’ve definitely had better, but they have a very original and cheap sushi menu, that includes quite a few vegetarian options), and one of the Atlanta JETs, Jaime, has organized a dinner at a Buckhead restaurant called Genki tonight, so I’ll be meeting around a dozen other Atlanta JET folks. I’m definitely looking forward to that–it’ll be great to have other people who, while they may not all be at the same point in life that I’m in, and while they most likely won’t be going to the same area of Japan that I am, are all prepping for this major transition as well. And it’d be great to get to know a few people before the official Atlanta orientation at the end of June.

Developments

Actually, a lot’s happened over the past week, but I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write about it (I’ve been too busy geeking out over Revenge of the Sith–OH MY GOD. Three viewings down, and I can’t wait to see it again!)…even now, I have to run, but I’ll just summarize:

  • several days after getting the e-mail, I got the Big Huge JET Packet in the mail. It came with a full-color foldout map of Japan, so I was able to really easily identify Tokushima-ken there. It also came with the visa application form (due in June–I actually can bring it to the Atlanta JET orientation they’re holding on June 25th), a “Japanese for JETs” textbook (I really need a refresher course, so this’ll be great), and a JET Program handbook. I read through most of it the day it arrived–it’s full of a lot of really, really useful information.
  • I got e-mails from my predecessor (Lindsay from Portland) and my contact at the Miyoshi-gun Tokushima-ken Board of Education overnight. I’m sending a quick one off to the BOE contact, and will definitely be sending Lindsay a much longer one pretty soon.

Oh, and I’ve also gotten some pretty heartening news lately–there are more JETs in the area than I thought (9 in Miyoshi-gun alone; Miyoshi-gun is made up of 6 or 7 towns, one of which is Ikeda-cho), and they’re a pretty tightly-knit community. Also, a new supermarket opened up in Ikeda, the largest in the area, and we can get flour tortillas there–so that’s a huge relief, because vegetarian food won’t be hard to come by. I also came across a couple of communities for Tokushima JETers–a Yahoo! group that I’m lurking on, because it’s mainly official business, and a messageboard, where I’m still waiting for my membership to be confirmed before I can even read the posts.

Everything’s moving quickly now. Monday marked the 2-month point until I leave, and I also got an e-mail from my manager asking whether I’d started thinking about my final day yet (not that they want me to go–and the other has already said that I’m welcome to join them again if they have an opening if I’m looking for employment when I get back–but they need a few weeks to hire somebody new)…and I have; I’m going to get back to them tomorrow or Friday about it. I wanted to give myself 4 weeks off, so I could use one week to travel and see people, but my parents aren’t fond of that idea, since I can stay and earn more money instead–so I’ll give myself 3 weeks off. That should be more than enough time, I hope…and maybe I can still make a few quick trips to visit relatives. (Like my grandmother…she’s definitely in her twilight years, and while there’s a strong chance I’ll get to see her in India at the end of the year, if I can get time off to go (I have two relatives who are getting married in the same week), I’d just love to spend some time with her beforehand.)

And now I have to run. More on the handbook and the e-mails later.

Tokushima-ken, Ikeda-cho.

We were getting the house recarpeted, so I’ve had my computer unplugged for 2 days, and tonight was the first chance I’ve had to check my e-mail. I got a copy of a letter I’ll be receiving in the mail (along with a lot of enclosures, which didn’t come with the e-mail).

So far, I know this much–it’s more rural than I expected. It’s a 16,000-person town (about 1/3 the size of the suburb I currently live in), in the district of Miyoshi, in the prefecture of Tokushima, on the northeastern side of the island of Shikoku, the smallest of the 4 main Japanese islands. It’s very varied geographically, but the climate’s warm and dry. There are multiple Ikedas–including one near Osaka, which really had me excited for a minute, because I thought I’d be in a large suburb.

But it’s not that I’m not excited–there’s just virtually no information about this town online. I still have so many questions, and so much research to do, but at least I know what to look up now.

It’s been an exhausting day (and I’m getting very little sleep tomorrow, as I go camp out for the 12:01 AM showing of Revenge of the Sith), so I should go soon. But at least it’s been decided. I’m off to Tokushima in 2 months.

The first of the goodbyes

I had to say my first long-term farewell yesterday–my friend Pat is leaving Tuesday so he can do a summer internship in Wisconsin, and won’t be back before I leave. It’s especially sad, because he’s been one of those guys who’s always just been around–we were in orchestra together for like 4 years straight, and had several Japanese classes together, too, and he and my other friend Laura and I have routinely gotten together for several hours several times a month this year so far (for the most part) to play frisbee in Piedmont Park. We were joking about how the only places big enough to throw a frisbee around in Japan were places where a lot of people were around, and that while we could try throwing between skyscrapers, it probably wouldn’t work. ;o)

It’s slowly beginning, though…but at least there’s a much bigger chance of him coming to Japan than anybody else, since he’s already very familiar with the language and culture, having spent extended periods of time there before. So he may consider it as a trip destination in the next year.

And more will be happening in the next month–another close friend of mine is leaving for New York for at least a year in June, and I have other friends who are taking off for grad school and other things across the country. We really are heading off in our own separate directions…except that I’ll be back eventually, though hopefully not for long, as I head off to do my masters elsewhere in the country. (But that involves taking the GRE in the next 2 months and hoping I get a good score on my first try… *groan*) It’s so weird to wrap my mind around. Finding out where I’m going to be placed will hopefully help me ground myself in this whole experience, though, and I hope I hear back about that pretty soon.

Testing…

This is just a test, to see if my syndication feed works. (The URL of the XML file is http://japan.ecomancer.net/smithainjapan.xml – have at! I’ve set up a LiveJournal feed at smithainjapan, and am trying to figure out if it’ll show up.)

Oh–so it actually is offiical. My papers are on their way to Tokyo as of this past Tuesday, and my consulate contact confirmed that they were all right. We still have so many questions, though…it’s funny, because my dad asks me about this and that and we’re at about the same level of informed-ness in terms of the actual process of my going over there. (He’s also offered to take several weeks off to help me settle in. While it’s great that he wants to help me get settled into everything, it’s something I have to do on my own, you know?)

I promise there’ll be more “meat” soon. After the office in Japan Japan processes all the paperwork and sends the placement results back, then things will get going. But to those of you who have stopped by already, thank you for reading!

Almost there…

Okay, everything’s done…I lucked out and found a copy of my passport that I’d made, possibly for my actual interview. (It hit me that I still haven’t actually signed my passport, but the Italian authorities had no problem with it when we were over there 2 years ago… *coughcough*) The medical form’s filled out…I sort of “fudged” the eye part, because while my doctor was able to determine that I’m 20/20 in each eye with my contacts in, the only numbers I could get for my non-corrected eyes were off the actual contact cases.

Anyway, though–the Reply Form consists of:

  • a set of Program Notes (just guidelines to read over)
  • the actual 2-page Reply Form (name, birthday/birthplace, checkboxes for “yes, I accept” and “no, I do not” and a place to sign, permanent contact info, “will you be accompanied by your spouse/child,” the name of the regional airport you’ll be flying out of (you’re also provided a list of the airports the JET group is flying from), passport number, “do you have a valid visa to enter Japan” (it’s okay to say no–I think they’ll help us secure them), and a place for 2 identical passport photos)
  • aforementioned list of designated airports JET will be departing from (woo, lucky for me, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson is one of them)
  • alterations to reply form – in case your name or contact info changes
  • medical form (name, DOB, age, sex, height (cm), weight (kg), blood pressure, pulse, eyesight with and without correction, colorblindness, hearing, speech, urinalysis, past history, chest x-ray (to check for TB)–you have to have it filled out by your doctor)

And I have to leave around 2 PM to give myself enough time to get to the Consulate General of Japan to drop it off in person, before dropping my car off at a friend’s place and taking MARTA to the airport for a weekend of geektastic Star Wars fun. Let’s just hope there won’t be any complications with submitting this, but I figure that if I can just drop it off at the front desk and have it in a properly addressed envelope, it should be no problem. At any rate, I’m off. :o)

Checking in

I’ve wanted to write more, but I’ve been so busy…I’m currently working on getting my Reply Form together, since it’s due back to my local Consulate General of Japan this coming Friday. The biggest issue is the medical form–I was only able to get my doctor to fill it out a couple of days ago, and now I have to wait on the results of the mandatory chest x-ray, and I’m trying to track down my optometrist to get the actual numerical values of the powers in my eyes…and I have to get this all done by Wednesday, since I’m going out of town Thursday for the weekend.

So a word to the wise–as soon as you hear back about your status, call your doctor. ;P

Other than that…not too much. We’re slowly compiling a list of all the things I have to take or account for, and it’s getting big. (I’m a little concerned about my violin–I’m definitely taking it with me, but will I be able to take it as one of my two carry-ons, or will I need the space for something else?) In terms of food, apparently there’s a mail-order Indian food store that delivers to anywhere in Japan, though, and they deliver ingredients as well as ready-made/instant food, so that’s good to know.

I’m out for now…hopefully I can start posting more once things pick up in May.

The interview

I think this’ll be a post I’ll have to come back to and continually edit, until I remember all the questions I got at my interview. The only “account” I have of all of them, besides the actual interview, was telling a few of my friends everything I could remember that evening–even though I knew I wanted to save them for posterity, I stupidly didn’t write them anywhere. Oh well.

Somebody posted these numbers to the JETjapan community on LiveJournal–around 5,000 people from the US applied this year, and 2,700 of them scored interviews. At that time (a month or two ago), it was estimated that 1,400 people would be selected–so roughly 25%. That’s not that bad at all.

Anyway, onto the specifics of the interview. It’s about 15-20 minutes max, and everyone will meet with three interviewers. A former professor told me that the more discouraged you feel after leaving the interview room, the better you did, because it means that the interviewers were impressed enough by you to want to give you challenging questions…and that wasn’t the case for me, because I did feel pretty confident about my interview (and as a result, that feeling of confidence had me pretty worried).

I’ve read online that usually two of the interviewers are Japanese (one playing the “good cop,” being friendly and understanding, and one playing the “bad cop,” asking the tougher questions and being more critical) and one are American…in my case, it was the other way around. I was interviewed by two former JET participants, one of whom was (and is, haha) the coordinator of the Atlanta JET office, as well as a Japanese professor from Clemson University. All my interviewers were quite friendly, though I got the sense that the Japanese professor was the closest to the “bad cop” role–but overall, it was actually a pretty pleasant and pressureless experience.

(Not everybody’s that lucky, though. A good friend of mine also made it to the interview stage, but her three interviewers, none of whom were the same as mine, rarely cracked a smile–they grilled her on specific grammar questions (probably because she had recent and extensive experience with teaching math and English in SAT prep courses), and even inquired about her financial status (read: amount of debt), and were all pretty hard on her all the way through. She ended up making the alternate list, and is accepting a position with the New York Teaching Fellows, instead of waiting to see what her chances of getting accepted into JET are, since alternates can hear back as late as September–and she wasn’t willing to wait that long.)

Why are you interested in the JET Program?

I’ve had an interest in Japanese culture for years, ever since we learned about it in school, but especially since high school, when I got a chance to explore it and the language more in-depth. I also love teaching–I’ve had experience as a tutor, teaching math to several kids for several years in high school, and teaching English for a brief period of time to a Korean grad student. Additionally, being of Indian descent, I feel that I can definitely relate to many of Japan’s intricacies–I’m very interested in the similarities and differences between all Asian cultures, and I’m especially interested in trying to determine the underlying threads throughout Asia that define the one “unifying” Asian culture. Additionally, since I just finished college, I can feel myself still transitioning and would like to detach myself from everything to “find myself,” and to get some direction and focus for the future.

How does this relate to your future career goals?

(I was kind of hoping to not get this question.) I kind of lied and said that I was considering doing something related to linguistics or international studies. Though, I mean, maybe–there’ll always be a need for people fluent in Japanese and interested in foreign languages, so. ;o) And I can totally take an international direction with doing media studies in grad school.

Name some things you would bring to show the students, who don’t speak any English, to show them examples of American culture.

I don’t remember what I initially answered (I think I said I’d bring books with photos in them, or something), but I do remember that after I floundered around a little, the Japanese interviewer pointed out that these students will speak no English. So after that, I talked about bringing examples of non-popular American music, like folk music and other genres that don’t get as much international coverage. I would also try to bring examples of food–and then I surprised myself by coming up with a really good answer (well, I think so, anyway ;P) on the fly, and I said I’d try to take a lot of candid photographs of my everyday life, because you really don’t learn much about what life in another country is like just from looking at posed and deliberate settings, and it’s important to show the students that American life is quite different from how our TV and film exports depict it to be.

What are some organizations or activities you would be interested in participating in, either through the school or among other JET participants?

I said that I’d definitely be interested in any music-related organizations, like learning about Japanese music (I should have said that I’d be interested in starting some kind of western classical string ensemble, because I totally am), and just shrugged and smiled and said that I would really be open to trying and experiencing anything.

We’d like you to do a self-introduction, using the whiteboard. You aren’t allowed to use any Japanese.

*draws stick figure of person with long hair and a smiley-face, turns to the interviewers, speaks slowly and enunciates carefully* My name is Smitha.
*writes “Smitha” clearly on the board*
*draws a really rough but recognizable map of the US* I’m from America… *writes “America” next to it, then draws a star over the southeast part of the map* …from the city of Atlanta. *writes “Atlanta”* But I am originally from India. *writes “India” off to the side*

I stared at the board for a minute, my mind having gone completely blank, and finally I kind of looked helplessly back at the interviewers. One of them suggested that I talk a bit about my family and interests, so (cringing inwardly that they had to heavily prompt me like this), I did.

*drew 2 stick figures of a man and a woman next to the one of me, and made them taller (though I’m actually taller than they are, but that would confuse the kids* I live with my father and mother… *draws short stick figure of a boy* …my younger brother… *draws short stick figure of a woman wearing glasses* …and my grandmother. *draws a really simple house shape around them (two diagonal lines for the roof, two vertical lines for the walls, one horizontal line for the floor)* We all live together.

*draws a square in the shape of a piece of paper and draws a stick figure on that* I like to draw… *draws a really bad-looking and hasty violin* …and play the violin… *draws a book* …and read.

Then they stopped me (and one of the interviewers complimented me for using so many pictures–if it worked for me, it can work for you!).

What would you say if you were placed in a more rural area and somebody came up to you and told you that you didn’t look American?

I got a bit long-winded with this–I said that I would explain that America is a country that has a population almost completely made up of immigrants, and that it isn’t a requirement to be Caucasian to be considered American, and that I believe that it’s possible to equally be from two countries (since I consider myself just as much of an Indian as I am of an American). I kind of continued along this vein for a bit, and then joked that I’d find a much simpler way to say it, and that I’d figure out how to say it in Japanese, since chances were that if this were in a rural area, there wouldn’t be a lot of English-speakers around. ;o)

How long have you played the violin? Did you learn via the Suzuki method?

This was a fairly tangential question from the Japanese interviewer, but she pointed out that it’s a very popular method in Japan, which made me realize that I should read up on exactly what it entails before going over. (I started playing through my middle school’s music program.)

We see that you had some experience with tutoring a Korean student in the English language. Can you tell us a bit about that experience, and how you think it will relate to teaching English in Japan?

The truth was that I’d only tutored Sangpil for a month, when his regular tutor, a friend of mine, left town to visit her family over the holidays. I’d tried to play it up, though…but I ended up sort of relating a humorous story that she had experienced (he liked to watch Friends, and one day he asked her what this line meant–it was a sexual/phallic reference, and they were in the middle of the student center, and she was trying to keep her voice down, but he couldn’t hear her, so she had to say it loudly to be heard–I didn’t actually tell the story at the interview :P), and said that I’d experienced some similar things to that. I also said that it made me realize that we use a lot of slang and “double-entendre” phrases, but when a person literally translates them, they mean something quite different. That’s something that many English speakers take for granted, but it’s not something that a teacher of the English language can afford to ignore.

Inaugural post

All right, here we go…this is the rather inauspicious introductory post of what’s hopefully going to be a detailed chronicle of the next year and a half. Though I’m about 12 minutes away from Daylight Savings Time ending (right? since it’s March, there’s no need to save daylight since the days are getting longer…bah, anyway), let me go ahead and explain.

If you’re reading this at this moment in time, then you probably came here via blogger.com, as I haven’t begun publicizing this yet. So hello, firstly. :o) I’m Smitha. I recently graduated from Georgia Tech with a BS in media studies and a minor in Japanese (though I was a violinist in the Georgia Tech Symphony Orchestra for a longer consecutive period of time than I was involved in either of the above departments, but anyway), and I work as a web designer currently. I’ve maintained another journal, Let’s Try This Again, for nearly 4 years now (the anniversary’s in under a week).

Back in November, I applied to join the JET Program–JET stands for Japanese Exchange and Teaching. I applied for the position of Assistant Language Teacher, or ALT for short. After sending off my 20-plus page packet, I heard back in January that I had made it past the first cut and had been granted an interview. This took place on February 17th (as did my very first car accident ever–at least it served to dispel all the nervous energy that was building up that day). And just this past week, on March 31st, I received word that I’d passed my interview and was on the final ALT placement short-list. After they receive my confirmation info, I’ll hear back about where in Japan I’ll be placed in May. My departure date is July 22nd or 23rd, depending on which flight out I catch (and I’m still working on upgrading my version of Adobe Acrobat Reader, and installing the Japanese Language Support plug-in, so I can actually read the .pdf’s the Atlanta JET coordinator sent me).

The news is still slowly sinking in. And with it is the realization that I have so much to do in the next 4 months before I leave…I have to figure out housing, medical insurance, bank accounts, credit cards, setting up a phone line…I have to buy clothes (which’ll wait till after I find out what area of Japan I’m placed in) and supplies, and a laptop…I have to start researching how feasible it is to be a strict vegetarian (read: no meat, and definitely no fish) in Japan…I have to work on my Japanese, since I’m already getting pretty rusty with just a few months of no regular practice…

Okay, it’s now 3:00 AM. I’ll be posting back-entries summarizing my application process and interview, and I’ll talk more about…well, everything…soon. The next few months will all be preparatory–after that is when the really juicy stuff will hopefully start. I definitely intend to maintain this regularly and set something up to display all my photos. But for now, good night!