Comments (0) Only a week or so left to go now until I’m in Japan and starting my job. In this video I reflect a bit on the past week and on the place that I will be leaving, Maine.
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Japan, JET Program, Maine, vlog
I’m back again with another YouTube video, this time about one of my favorite subjects, learning Japanese. This time, I discuss the Japanese language requirements for CIRs and how I went about learning this language.
Time for another edition of The CIR Files! I went down to the New England JET Alumni Association’s special pre-departure orientation for new JETs in Boston this past Saturday. Even though it was optional, the turnout was high and I got a lot out of it. I also talk about some new updates on my job as a CIR: I talk about my apartment and some details of the work that awaits me.
I’m back with another episode of The CIR Files! In this episode, I talk about how I came to learn about the JET Program and the application process. This is the third vlog I’ve done (second in English) and while I’m still getting the hang of how it’s done, I’m enjoying it very much. I have some ideas kicking around in my head for future episodes, so stay tuned!
It’s my first shot at doing a video blog! Enjoy as I ramble on about myself, the JET Program and the CIR position. I also made a version in Japanese. I can’t promise to do this each time, but it was a lot of fun and I think it’d be neat if I could reach out to Japanese people through my videos as well.
English
Japanese 日本語
Hey everyone!
超久しぶりね！Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve written on this blog. There’s been a variety of reasons for that, not the least of which is that I just had my final year of classes here at the University of Maine. The fall semester was a tough one, since I was taking nothing but high level English classes. I was reading two books or so a week and writing several papers month. If that doesn’t sound like a lot to you, well, too bad ’cause it was a lot for me. (￣−￣) This past semester wasn’t quite as bad, but I did have my final graduation paper hanging over my head the whole time, affectionately called a “capstone.”
But now that’s all over! Yesterday I handed in my lovely capstone, today my final Shakespeare paper and next week I only have one actual final (I have two others in Japanese and Korean, but they’re so different I wouldn’t call them “finals”). Being as such, I now have real time for myself again, which means I can start writing here once more. However, since this blog is titled “Joe In Japan,” I wouldn’t have considered it appropriate to continue if it wasn’t for one little fact:
I got into the JET Program as a Coordinator for International Relations!
If you follow my twitter then you already know this. Yes, kind readers, yours truly will be returning to work in Japan come August. A whole new set of challenges and adventures are sure to await me and I’m going to be taking you all along with me once again via this blog. My life as a JET, my life in Japan, it will all be here in the form of blog posts, pictures and videos. In particular I want to focus on that last one. I’ve been watching tons of Japan vloggers over on YouTube these past few months, especially those by people who were/are on the JET program. They’ve inspired me to start my own vlog, so starting sometime soon I’ll be posting videos to this channel, focusing on life in the JET program as a CIR: http://www.youtube.com/JoeInJapan86. Please, feel free to subscribe. I know there’s nothing there yet but there will be, I promise! I really do!
I thought that I would use the rest of this post to touch on my experience applying to the JET program. The best way to hear about this would be head over to “English Teaching in Japan,” a podcast run by Chaz Wright. Chaz is, wait for it, an English teacher in Japan who talks about his daily life and the experience of being a teacher over there. A couple weeks after I finished my interview for JET in Boston we sat down on Skype and talked about my time as an exchange student in Hirosaki and then specifically about my journey from the JET application phase to interview. Listen to it here:
My interview on “English Teaching in Japan.” Thanks Chaz!
One final thing I’ll be doing today. Yes, that’s right, today. I’ll be posting my Statement of Purpose, the essay part of the JET application that asks you to explain why you want to go to Japan and what kinds of skills and experience you have that will contribute to JET. Since I got accepted into the program, they must have liked it at least a little bit.
Well, that’s all for now. Thanks so much for reading and supporting me while I was an exchange student in Hirosaki! I hope that we can have some great times together again starting this August. :) じゃあ、な！
It’s been a pretty full weekend for me once again. Since Wednesday, I went to the second concert on Thursday (which rocked), went to Aomori with Hwang and Paku, did CPR training with my club, went out for karaoke and finally, on Sunday, spent the entire day with my new host family. Well, let’s get into then, shall we?
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