Monday I finally heard from my JET predecessor in Japan. I will be living and teaching in Mukaihara (??) town in Akitakata city. It’s on the JR line between Hiroshima and Miyoshi, 45-60 minutes from Hiroshima. According to my predecessor, my schools are also in walking distance of my home, so may manage to get by without a car, which might be nice.
My main school will be Mukaihara Junior High School. Their website has a great panarama from the school’s roof, looking across the valley from west to south. ITS SO GREEN! heh. This map is centered on the school and you can zoom out to see what’s around the area.
Also looks like I’ve really lucked out, my predecessor tells me I’ve got a nice house, rent free! 
If that’s the case, I may actually have money to travel and such.
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Got an email this morning from one of the outgoing JETs in the area I’m going. Its actually called Akitakata and is a new “city” of about 35,000 that was formed by merging six existing towns (a phenomenon that’s been happening a lot recently in Japan). Its close to where I thought it would be, this map shows the area that the city covers. Hiroshima is a ways off the bottom left edge and Miyoshi is just a little off the top right edge. Still waiting to find out exactly where I’m going in the fairly large area, there are three schools that me and two other candidates are to be placed in once the school board figures out who goes where. Hopefully will know this by the end of next week.
Still need to do a write-up of the trip to Japan with John, Jessica & Ashley that I did over the past week as well as post pictures. Short version is we all had a blast seeing a little bit of Tokyo (mostly Oeno & Akihabara), the beautiful shrines in Nikko, visiting my friend Dawn in her wonderfully quaint Takayama, more shrines in Kyoto and finally the amazing castle in Himeji. I really didn’t want it to end, it was so much fun doing and seeing stuff with the other three…
Well, got the email from the LA Consulate with my JET placement today! I’ll be in the town of Aki in Hiroshima prefecture. Still trying to find out for sure where that is, what its like and who my predecessor is. Near as I’ve been able to find out, its close to the small (pop. 40000ish) city of Miyoshi and about 1.5 hours inland by train from the city of Hiroshima. If I’ve got it right, this map may show its location if I’ve entered the correct postal code. Looks like its near a train station (yay!) that’s a direct, local line to Hiroshima. I’ve also put out feelers to get in contact with JETs in the area, so hopefully I’ll know more soon…
Well after getting the physical done on Thursday afternoon, I mailed in my acceptance to JET on Friday. Ended up going to a little urgent care place to get the physical so I could get it done quickly and not wait a week or two for an appointment (since the acceptance is due by the 28th). Basically JET provides a health questionnaire for the doc to fill out, detailing the usual physical stuff, plus the result of a chest x-ray (to check for TB) and basic health related urinalysis (no drug test or the like). Really, they want to be assured you won’t bring a plague to the school or create embarrassment by keeling over. Came to a total of $136, tho — ouch.
So, now the third stage of waiting is started, this time to find out where in Japan I’m going. The application allows you to select three preferred prefectures — tho there are many factors involved in placement (about half of them being kinda random) so you never know if you’ll get them or anything even close. Ya could ask for the sun & sand of Okinawa and end up in the snow of Hokaido. Or vise-versa.
I put down as my first choice a large town/small city of about 88,000 called Hatsukaichi, which is a little outside Hiroshima. The schools there and some here in Tucson have had connections such as teacher exchanges, so I figured that it was the closest Tucson has to a sister city in Japan (such relationships can help you get placed, but alas Tucson’s sister city is in the Ukraine…). It also sounds like a pretty nice place, near Hiroshima for a little bit of large city life and Miyajima for scenic views and nature.
Second choice is Nara, which is near Kyoto and Osaka and has lots of history as the original capital. One of the Japanese students who studied aikido with the class I’m in at UA was from there and it looks like it has lots of aikido opportunities, even for English speakers. But it and the area are quite frequent requests by JETs. Third choice was Fukuoka, which sounds nice and is closer to my prefered climate (kinda wondered if I should have put down Miyazaki on the south end of Kyuushuu, since its more-or-less the same latitude as Tucson, but its really remote).
Anyways, just have to see. Will know in about another month. Then, after that, the final stretch of waiting starts for the actual departure…
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