This morning I went to my elementary school’s “Culture Day”. Its was basically like many school plays in the US, just without any connection to any particular holiday (or as far as I could tell). So there were a few grades that did plays & a few that put on concerts with some singing & music (reminding me that recorders in the hands of young children are Weapons of Music Destruction). On the whole it was pretty good. Probably the one I liked best was done by the 1st graders, because I could follow the story most (it was about some frogs that get attacked by snakes, but some turtles surround the frogs & protect them with their shells). One of the other grades did something about a cat taking a taxi that included what I think was a Totoro joke.

Unfortunately I forgot my real camera & the lighting was too harsh for most of the stage shots to come out on my camera phone. But above is a pic of the entire school, singing as a group. Click on it to see a bigger version.

At least for this year. One of the joys, apparently, of being a government employee here in Japan is the mandatory annual physical exam. Its even less fun for us JETs because we all come from countries that have a high expectation of privacy in health matters. Here your test results are as likely as not to be a matter of conversation for half the town. Another undesirable aspect is that they do chest x-rays for the TB test, and I’d rather not up my rad count any more than necessary after all the upper GI’s I’ve had. Between all that and being poked and prodded by a doctor that I can’t understand, I was really not looking forward to this. But they got me scheduled for my exam on Thursday, even though it meant rescheduling my classes on that day and that I’d have to be driven to the neighboring town by my boss.

Today I found an envelope sitting on my desk, turns out it was the, uh, colon cancer test sample kit. They tried to explain how to use the thing, but as usual the language gap in the culture center office was too great to be sure that the meaning was correctly understood. So they scheduled to have the English teacher from the junior high come by later to explain things. Well, actually there was a bit more than that, there was a whole medical history questionnaire that she needed to go over with me too. Talk about awkward.

Fortunately this was all averted when I explained that I had already had an exam about 5 months ago to get into the program. She explained this to my boss and as a result it my choice whether or not to take it. Needless to say, I’m teaching class Thursday instead…

[Another catch-up entry] The past two weekends I have had a sports festival at one of the schools or another. Weekend before last there was one at the elementary school on Sunday the 19th. Then this past weekend there was one at the kindergarden on Saturday the 25th. On one hand these are lots of fun, watching the kids do their thing and often their parents joining in. Always interesting to see how well the kids keep up the parents or vise-versa. On the other hand they’re a bit of a pain, because they break up the weekend that one could be doing other things during. At least for the elementary school one, everyone got the following Tuesday afternoon off as comp time. I’m not sure of the case with the kindergarden one. Technically I should get time off for it, have to see if I feel like pushing it or not.

As classes go along, I am slowly picking up on some of the personalities of my students. Today in the 2nd year JHS classes we were doing an exercise on “what do you want to be in the future” and I was helping some of the students look up what their career dreams are in English. Looks like I’ve mostly got a bunch of B-Ark hairdressers and such. But there were a few interesting choices. Most notable one was a very energetic girl who’s in a bunch that plays shopping bag volleyball in the halls after lunch. She couldn’t find her career choice in the dictionary and couldn’t describe what it was to me. So she pantomimed with a friend, first talking then lightly whacking the friend in the stomach with the back of her hand and saying “nande yanen”. I’d seen that manzai comedy style from Osaka in Azumanga Daioh and knew just what she meant. Pointed out “comedian” to her in the dictionary and the teacher confirmed that that’s what the student was looking for. Heh, anime/manga exposure comes in handy again…

I’ve read on Big Daikon that the US applications for the 2005 JET Program are now online. A year ago I was anxiously waiting for the 2004 application to be released so I could start working on it. As I documented here, it was just the first of many stages of waiting, and the second time around for me at that.

So, for those that are applying this time around, my main piece of advice is “patience”. Waiting is a large part of the process and you’ll go crazy if you don’t have patience. The long delays and waits are almost part of the application itself — a JET needs patience to deal with Japanese bureaucracy and personal matters like getting phones, etc. If you don’t have patience, you’ll annoy many of the Japanese people you deal with, thus demonstrating patience is as important probably as the application, transcripts or statement of purpose.

This patience merges with persistence as well. I didn’t even make it to the interviews the first time I applied, but I showed patience and persistence of interest by applying the second time. Another friend of mine is here starting her 2nd year after making it her second time as well. If you really want to be here, be patient and persistent enough to apply twice. Everything I’ve heard indicates your odds are much better the second time around.

One of the greatest sources of worry on the application is the statement of purpose. In two double spaced pages you have to sell yourself to the reviewers on how you can benefit the program and your interest in Japan. Additionally, since this is an application for an English teaching job, the English spelling and grammar needs to be perfect and the content well developed. But just knowing where to start can be confounding. So I’ve decided to follow the example of many other successful JETs and post my essay to give hopefuls some ideas.

NOTE: don’t bother trying to copy directly from mine, the program office is very good at picking such cases out and circular filling the offender’s application…

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