On April 2nd, I got the call. Almost five months earlier, I’d applied to teach English in Japan as part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme. Finally: I knew I was going to Japan. In other parts of the world, the results had already been released by email, almost a week before I found out. April 2nd was the last day before the four-day Easter long-weekend, and I’d already resigned myself to a long wait. But then, just before I was about to leave for my weekly Japanese lesson, I saw on Facebook that the Sydney consulate had begun calling people with the results. I considered staying at home to wait for the call, but I’d spent so much time that week waiting that I decided to keep doing things as usual. Of course, the call came through while I was driving, so I had to pull over and call back. Although I’d spent several weeks in suspense, my reaction was very calm. It’s taken weeks for it to begin to sink in, and I think it’ll only feel completely real once I know exactly where in Japan I’ll be going.
Since 1987, the Japanese government has recruited college graduates from around the world to work as Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs). As an ALT in a Japanese public school, I’ll be team-teaching English classes and introducing students to Australian culture. And of course, I too have a lot to learn about Japan.
This story begins almost eight years ago, when I was 16. I’d just finished high school, and I wanted to travel. Japan was familiar from all the comic books and TV shows I’d loved in high school.
I spent two weeks traveling alone in Japan: Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Himeji, Nara. At the time, I didn’t know a single word of the Japanese language. But somehow, I found that I was able to see temples in Kyoto, visit the Imperial Palace in Tokyo (see above), and buy electronics and games in Akihabara. On a whim, I bought a game called “Railfan: Taiwan High Speed Rail”. Turns out, the game’s only objective is to have you drive a train on a single 3 hour journey from Taipei to Zuoying, without exceeding the speed limit. I once managed 30 minutes of it, before confirming to myself that it really was completely pointless.
Of course, the experiences I had were no different to any other young tourist seeing Japan for the first time. Well, with the possible exception of my first time on the Shinkansen (bullet train). Running late, I asked the cafe to give me my breakfast to take away. They put my takeaway coffee cup in the same paper bag as my sandwich I still think that’s slightly odd. Are you supposed to just hold the bag very carefully, and hope the cup stays upright?, and I somehow assumed that the paper bag was waterproof. I put the entire thing, coffee and all, into my backpack. It was only once I was on the Shinkansen that I realised that everything I owned was soaked in hot coffee. Because I couldn’t speak Japanese, I only spoke to a few people in English. I felt like I’d seen some amazing places, but I hadn’t really connected with many people.
This is the view that greeted me in Shinjuku, on my very first day in Japan in 2007.
Still, that didn’t stop me from going back. The next year, I convinced my family that Japan was an excellent place for a family vacation: just a week this time. Leaving Japan then, I felt like I had to return. But I promised myself that next time, I would return knowing how to speak Japanese.
Promises like those are hard to keep. Fast-forward to January 2014, and I still hadn’t started studying Japanese. Of course, I might’ve flicked through a phrasebook, and to be sure, I did do one term of Japanese in high school. For some reason, in my first year of high school, we were asked to do one term (8 weeks) each of Japanese, French, German, and Latin. This effectively ensured that I didn’t learn any of them. In Australia, you then have to complete another year of language study: I chose German. Unfortunately, all I remember of that is a comically contrived cop show featuring a German Shepherd. And, many of my favourite authors were from Japan. Of course, I read all those books in translation. But, at that stage, all I really knew was how to count to ten.
The reason was simple. I felt that Japanese was too hard: impossible, even. Three alphabets? Thousands of characters? No way!
But I decided I had to make a start somewhere. I was 24, and English was still the only language I could speak. Growing up in Australia, and in England before that, I never learned how to speak Sinhalese, the language of the country in which I was born, but only lived in for about six months. If I wanted to learn another language, I figured I should start now. Before it was too late?
Well, it wasn’t too late. Language learning turned out to be very logical, and unlike my high school German classes, this time, I had a real motivation. I wanted to read Murakami Haruki, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Yoshimoto Banana - in the original Japanese. I knew that would be a long-term goal. But along the way, I realised how satisfying it was to be able to understand a language that was previously incomprehensible.
It didn’t take me long to realise that to really learn a language, you need to be fully immersed in the country where it’s spoken. Around that time, I heard about the JET Programme. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to become involved in a small Japanese community, and to live in an environment where English is hardly spoken at all.
Over the next few weeks and months, I’ll write more about what it was like to apply for the JET Programme. Then, once I’m in Japan, I’ll keep this blog updated with stories about my travels, and what it’s like to live in Japan.
While I was applying for the JET Programme, something I really enjoyed was reading blogs written by former and current JETs. Each person had their own story, their own town or city, their own reactions to living and working in Japan. So, of course, now I have to write one of my own. If you’re wondering, not every post I write will have this many footnotes. But, seeing as I coded this feature when I designed my blog, I figure I may as well use it!