Youkoso!

Howdy. I'm Jeff and you probably already knew that. Starting August 1st, I'm going to be living and working in Japan. The contract is for 1 year, but if I like Japan and Japan likes me, then I could easily stay longer.

A little bit about me. I'm 23, just graduated from University of Toronto (Hon. BA in English and Philosophy). I'm half-Mexican, half-Canadian and my home is in Boston. I've lived in Canada, USA, Scotland, and technically Mexico. I don't speak Spanish, but I do speak a little bit of Japanese. Again, you probably know all this. But on the off-chance that I don't know you in person, now you know a little bit about me!

The program I'm going to Japan with is called the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Programme. People who go on this program are called JETs. There are three kinds of jobs for people who go on JET: ALT, CIR, and SEA. Those are Assistant Language Teacher, Coordinator for International Relations, and Sports Exchange Advisor. I'll be an ALT, which means that I'll be assisting a JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) in several schools to teach English to Japanese children. I'll be doing this at two elementary schools, one high school, one after-school, and four English clubs. If you want to know more about JET, check out their website. I could go on and on about the program, but this is just supposed to be an introductory post. Maybe later I'll talk about it.

I don't want to get too specific on this blog about my job because it is a public blog. Anyone can find it and, from what I hear, people will be looking. Therefore I won't say what schools I'm teaching at, I'll never name students, I'll never name coworkers, and I probably won't even say what town I'm living in. Also, if you happen to know any of that information, I would please ask that you don't post that in a comment on my blog.

That said, I can tell you that I'll be living in Okayama prefecture, in a town in the southwest of the prefecture. The town is a bit inland, and thus rural, and thus I can't wait to get there. For those who are thinking about Fukushima Daiichi (the nuclear plant), be assured that Okayama is quite far from there. I am blatantly stealing this photo from someone else's blog, but I'm sure he won't mind:

So as you can see, Okayama is quite far from Fukushima. Rest assured, I am nowhere near the nuclear badness.

I've had a pretty good summer. Some friends came to visit twice and I had an amazing time during both visits. It is a bit sad to have to say goodbye, I admit, because I don't know when I'll see any of them again. I may love Japan and choose to stay there long term. Or I may hate it. But who knows. This is all just a grand experiment.

This Friday I head to Toronto for a week as a pre-Japan thing. Then on the 30th I hop on a plane for Tokyo. I'll update my blog more when I'm over there. I also have a youtube channel that I've set up. There's nothing there right now, though. I'll post again in here when I've got my first video up there (I'm waiting for the awesometastic camcorder to arrive).

That's it for now. Stick around, I'll post other stuff (cool stuff) later.

~Jeffles