The most common questions I have gotten from other JETs are “Where are you stationed,” “Where are you from,” and “Why did you join the JET program?” I can’t speak for other people, but my journey here started long ago.
When I was in middle school, I heard a song that made me want to study Japanese. I began studying it on my own at that time, and studied it up into college. It was there that I learned about the JET program, and kept it in my mind as something I would like to pursue in the future.
Then, a teacher was hired at my university who immediately set out to systematically destroy their Japanese program. She nearly succeeded, driving away two of the best teachers I have had in my entire life and burning so many bridges for the university it’s deeply impressive the program has ever been able to rebuild. After her contract ran out and she was finally gone from the university, the program that I had originally joined had changed so drastically that I would have had to completely start over in order to pursue a degree in Japanese Studies. By then it was too late. Any enthusiasm I had for the study of Japanese was long gone. I was exhausted, depressed, and no longer cared. I decided not to continue any formal study of Japanese, and instead continued attending other classes trying to find something, anything, that interested me the way Japanese once had. I have never found it.
I floundered for years after that, struggling with medical problems, chronic pain, and a general lack of interest in everything around me. Eventually I was finally able to get surgery that corrected my issues with chronic pain. I had gone from barely being able to attend a handful of courses to taking full course loads and beyond, and completed my degree that year.
After I graduated, I moved over one-hundred miles away so that I could be with my boyfriend of nearly five years, who had taken a job transfer six months prior. After I had been there less than a month, our relationship ended.
For me, the JET Program had always been a goal when I had none: a direction to head toward when I had nowhere else to go. I would tell myself that that’s what I would do when I graduated. I never actually believed it, it was just an abstract goal to keep me going. Now that I had graduated and no longer had any reason to stay in state, I finally decided to apply for it. I told myself that I would try two times. If I was rejected outright this year, I would get a winter tourism job at a ski resort in the lower 48 so that I could be closer to my Grandmother. If I was rejected later on in the process, I would get a summer tourism job and try again that next winter. If I was rejected after both tries, I would move out of state and find some other goal. To be honest, most of the reason why I applied was simply I had nowhere else to go and had nothing left to lose.
To my great surprise and trepidation, my application was accepted. Then I made it through the interview process, then the next stage, and the next. Things haven’t gone right for me in over a decade, so the prospect of something actually turning out for once was far more intimidating than the prospect of failure. I was used to everything being awful and falling through at the last minute, I had no idea how to handle success. I kept anticipating something would fail along the line, but now I am in Japan. Even so, I still don’t quite believe that, and it has never fully registered. I’m sure I will figure it out at some point, but it will not be today.
Of course, having nothing left to lose isn’t completely true. It isn’t as though I had no friends and no one who I cared about that I was leaving behind. In fact, there was someone in particular who helped me get through the last year that was extremely painful to leave. But what is true is that I had nothing actively keeping me from applying anymore, and that I desperately needed to go somewhere far away from everything I knew. Perhaps a better question would be, “Why not JET?”
I now live in Kyushu and teach over 1,000 students across four schools. Unfortunately, my personal life has been in chaos since almost the moment I arrived in Japan, and that hellish momentum has yet to slow down. But, I know that things will get better. They have to. If nothing else, at least I have achieved something, and I have been able to move out of Alaska as I have wanted to do for over fifteen years.
Happy Travels,
シロクマ
jisaboke 