Living in a Spring's Day

一歩づつ、少しづつ。 Just go step-by-step, little by little.

[aspringsday]

Oh, summer~

How I despise it. It's hot, it's sticky, it's NOISY (looking at you cicadas), and it's one of the best times of the year in Japan. Out of my three placement requests I landed in my third choice where summer can be the most brutal season along with winter. We're locked in a basin (like a bowl)  surrounded by mountains. It's great for keeping away most of the extreme weather. The thunderstorms can teeter on either amazing or scary around here.

Though everyone is sweating it out either indoors or outdoors there's a kind of excitement in the air for the night to come. Summer is the FESTIVAL SEASON! It's also the longest break of the year for students. Teachers still have to show up unless they take a vacation day though. They always look so tired, but chances are they are unwinding at the end of the day with a cold beer somewhere.

There's something so unique about the summers in Japan that you can't help but be even just a little bit smitten with it. Even though the days get hazy and humid and you'd rather be anywhere than the muggy office or a packed train there's a feeling of unity when you're going through it with other people. You even stand out a little less because even we foreigners have to suffer it.

 One festival that happens around the end of August-early September is the Fire Festival. That big old peak with the steep slope is a topless Fuji deciding to finally grace us with her full presence. By the way, if you ever see Fuji with a crazy amount of snow on her cap and there are sakura petals whirling around in a swirl of cherry blossom rain with a red pagoda off to the side A) that's in my prefecture and you should absolutely come and see it and B) it's a a bit photoshopped. Best to come in fall for a full snow-covered top view. The autumn foliage is just as gorgeous as the cherry blossoms I assure you. Fuji gets her first snowfall usually around November and it completely melts off right before the rainy season in June then climbing season opens up from July to the end of August. The Fire Festival is to announce the close of the summer and climbing season and to thank her for no major accidents (the Shinto part of it).

As much as I complain about summer being the worst season ever I can't help but look forward to its arrival. This is a shot on top of the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi. That bright illuminating beacon is Tokyo Tower.

Even nature gets to enjoy the sweet fruits of summer like this little rhino beetle and his piece of melon. He hung out with us in the office all day enjoying the aircon and his little slice of melon. 

[aspringsday]

Welcome to “Living in a Spring’s Day”.

I live in a little town just shy of 8,000 people. It’s actually part of a larger city made up of 5 other towns. The city itself is still fairly new though with it being only 15 years old, but the towns themselves are quite historical. I live in the town most famous for peaches and grapes and the locals aren’t joking when the say they’re damn good. In English its name means ‘Living in a Spring’s Day’.  

These are the ‘Shine Mascots’ a breed of African grapes and my town’s pride and joy aside from the peaches. They can grow to be pretty sizable little delicacies and they tend to be seedless unless the farmers need to start a new vine. You’ll see them in jellies, cakes, and as ice cream once they ripen in summer. Cafes, restaurants, and souvenir shops will put them in everything. There are fields of them surrounding both of the schools I teach at and we’ll often get them in school lunch once the season hits. I swear I’ll tell you more about my schools and actual job later though.

“指切りげんまん よ-Yubikiri Genman (Pinky Promise!”)   

These are ‘Kyoho Grapes’ and are MY FAVORITE. If you ask around many folks here will likely say the Mascot is the king of grapes, but don’t believe this falsehood. Both the Mascot and Kyoho are said to make really good wine (though I couldn’t tell you, I’m not fond of the drink myself), but the Kyoho in particular makes a delicious ‘nama wine’ which is sweet and right up my ally. We have quite a few wine festivals in fall and you can try both of these guys in their fermented form or as fresh juice. 

If you get a chance to try them eat them with the skin on so the locals can gawk at you for not peeling them off like they do. Then you can ogle them right back when they take an extra minute to peel theirs instead of just popping it in their mouth. It was funny for my co-workers and students to learn that their new foreign teacher didn’t peel grapes. 

[aspringsday]

So...hello there.

It’s been just about four years since I started this journey and lo and behold I have not cataloged any of it on here as I fully intended to. My bad. At this point the best thing would be to just start from here and write about certain memories as I go through my archives of photos and entries that I did record elsewhere! However before doing that I can at least introduce to the small town that became such an enormous part of my life now.  

[aspringsday]

It’s not you....It’s JET. part I

Hello again peeps! Thank you for following the beginnings of my JET journey and sorry for no update in the last several months! It’s going to be an interesting ride for me so honestly I more than likely will be posting sporadically till I get settled in.

So, there has been a lot that has happened since the last post but for now I’ll just keep this one DC Orientation-centric.  

First I was one of the 81 Washington DC JETs (it felt like way more people were in the room but that’s what they told us) from America this year to be selected for this year’s round. Usually not so many are chosen. We were told that the JET Programme this year had 3600 applications and out of those approximately half made it to the interview stage, then from those just over 1200 made the final cut. My nerves weren’t shot during the whole process I swear....

This is pretty much on the same website on the last post and is based on the American JET Programme timetable so for your particular country’s JET timeline it’s best to check out the Japanese Embassy or Consulate in your country. For the US the application opens up in mid-late fall and is due before Thanksgiving or Christmas depending on how late they open it up for submissions. 

I’ll just give you the general gist of what is what in terms of the selection process. 

Once you get past the interview phase and receive your congratulatory email, phone call, letter (it varies by consulate on how they choose to let you know, but thankfully mine was by email. Any other way would have had me watching my phone and mailbox like a hawk) you’ll be placed in one of two categories: Shortlist or Wait-list

Being shortlisted means that you are selected to be a part of this year’s candidates to go to Japan. I was thankfully shortlisted so you can imagine how happy I was to be picked right off the bat. 

It felt good. So very good. 

Hey you work hard to get to where you want to be and then to see it payoff feels absolutely-freaking-amazing. So darn tooten I celebrated with a happy dance.

Now being wait-listed means that you were a strong candidate, but they are putting you on hold just in case one of the shortlisted candidates decides to drop the program. Being wait-listed is not the worse thing in the world. My advice is to do all the paperwork and send in everything you need to do as if you were shortlisted anyway. Actually my advice is to try and do all the paperwork like you were selected during your application process. It makes you so much more stress free in the long run. Also, I picked my departure date to be in July versus the early April arrival slot so I’m going off of the July timetable. 

So once everything is done and you finished all that pesky paperwork (or are STILL waiting for the FBI to send your results to DC...) you make your way to your departure consulate (the consulate you applied through). I was really nervous about what to expect and what sort of people I would be meeting. After all, I just scored a freaking JOB with JET. I’m pretty much still in my college mentality more so than my adulting one. But luckily enough it’s not so hard to settle into.  

So this post seems like overload already so please stay tuned for the next one!

[aspringsday]

Welcome, welcome, oh and welcome to the THE Japan!

Heeeeeeeey!

So I’m the Japanga Girl (new name who’s this). I’ve just recently started my journey as a new JET for 2015. For those of you who don’t know what JET is allow me to explain!

JET (Japan Exchange Teaching) is a program that connects undergraduate grads or soon to be grads interesting in promoting cultural exchange and teaching English in Japan to boards of education all over Japan. It’s ran by:

CLAIR (Council of Local Authorities and International Relations)

MIC (the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications)

MOFA (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

MEXT (the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and technology       -the longest freaking name for a ministry ever in my humble opinion-

and FINALLY the local government organizations all over Japan’s 47 prefectures. So pretty much if you’re selected for the program you get sent out to whatever prefecture and city’s specified needs you fit into. As to what these needs are....yea I don’t really know. In fact most people I asked or whose blogs I’ve purused over don’t exactly know other than the basics, which you can can find here: http://www.jetprogramme.org/e/aspiring/eligibility.html

So ANYWHO, I’ll be blogging my experiences here on this JETcoaster of mine as I go through it and give you the run down of how I even went on to apply and get accepted as a JET for 2015!