I was a member of the JET Programme from August 2008 - August 2009 and I lived and taught in Japan for a year. Here are some anecdotes from my Japanese experience ...
08/13/2008
08/13/2008
Here is your latest update from the land of the rising sun.
We are starting to get in to the swing of things here; every weekday morning we get up around 6:00 and eat breakfast together before I leave for work at 7:20. I have to be at school before 8:25 even thought it is summer vacation for the students right now and there is not much for me to do yet! (School starts on Sept. 1st). I leave everyday at 4:00 to catch the train back home. Depending on the train connections, it takes between half an hour and 45 minutes to get from our apt. to my school, so its not too bad. Also, all the teachers here are really nice; they all love to talk to me (and they all talk about Ian all the time) and one of them took me out to lunch the other day! She drove me around to see some of the local temples\ruins (of which there are tons!), and that same teacher wants to take me and Ian to a nearby archeological museum this Friday.
Ian has kept himself busy while Ive been at school - he is in charge of grocery shopping (and household stuff) and learning where everything is in our town. The other day he surprised me with iPhones! This is quite impressive considering it is hard to find things around here (there is a definite lack of street signs and those that are displayed are all in Japanese of course) and nobody in the store spoke a single word of English! (The entire transaction was done with the help of some third party person at a call center). And for those of you who were wondering, iPhones are very very awesome. :)
Yesterday Ian went out to get us collapsible bicycles. Aside from the coolness factor (folding bikes are pretty neat), they are the only bikes allowed on trains. Being able to take bikes with us when we travel by train is going to be a great help!
The train system here is super convenient as it is, and we're in a great location to travel around. We live about 5 minutes (walking) away from Yagi Station in Kashihara city, and from Yagi (by train) its only about 45 minutes and $5 to get to Nara city (the capital city of Nara prefecture, and famous for it's park filled with thousands of tame deer). In fact, we are going to Nara tonight to see the lantern festival that is taking place in the park! Here is a link:
From Yagi it's also about an hour and $9 to get to Kyoto, 45 minutes $8 to go to Osaka, and about an hour to get to Kobe. So anyone who wants to come visit us will have lots of vacation options! However it takes several hours (and its rather expensive) to get to Tokyo from where we live; but anyone who is visiting can pick up a Japanese rail pass in the states ($200) and get unlimited train tickets anywhere in Japan for a week.
Speaking of vacations, some of you have asked when I have time off work. I get every weekend off (and if I ever do have to come in to work, they give me an extra vacation day later) and I have a few scattered 3 day weekends between now and November, but I dont really have any long breaks until late December - at which point I will hopefully be able to take a week & a half or 2 weeks off for Christmas break! Of course we dont actually get Christmas off here, but December 23rd is a national holiday (the Emperors birthday) and we will get several days off for New Years, so it should be easy to get a good chuck of Christmas holiday time!
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