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.  

Not so positive things:  cracking my iPhone screen, my entire back screaming in pain due to severe sunburn, finding out that my entire department read my SoP and other sensitive documents before my arrival (like I understand my supervisor reading it but the other ALTs too???).

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!