Finally got the first contact from my prefecture's board of education!

Extract from Roman's email...

"Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening Everyone,

Welcome to Fukuoka JET!

.....Essentially, my position is intended to be a bridge between the Japanese administrators and you, the JET participants. The PA is always available to answer work related questions/queries/issues, to listen to any personal grievances (we receive training as counselors), to mediate if necessary during difficult situations and to just generally be someone in the upper trenches who is always looking out for you. On any given day, I will be dealing with an array of matters ranging from contractual issues, tax, pension information, conflict resolution, arranging seminars, translation, small questions and any and everything else in between. Basically, if you have a question or a problem that needs some friendly attention, I'll be your first point of contact in most cases. Until the PA system was established- all decisions affecting JETs and the JET Programme were basically made by Japanese Administrators with little regard to ALTs opinions and input. Now you have someone on your side who shares your perspective (or at least understands it) who is representing and working hard for you to hopefully make your lives and over all JET experience better. That's a PA in a nutshell.

The Basics

This summer, we will be welcoming approximately 37 new JETs to Fukuoka. JETs are employed in Japan in one of three positions - Assistant Language Teacher (ALT), Co-ordinator for International Relations (CIR) and Sports Exchange Advisor) SEA.

In Fukuoka, ALTs are assigned to one of four teaching divisions:

Senior High School
Junior High School
Municipal
KitaKyushu City

All of you receiving this email will be Senior High School ALTs and that is pretty awesome in my view. At Senior High, you will be assigned to work at one school throughout your tenure. In some special cases, you may find yourself being asked to teach occasional classes at a nearby school that does not have an ALT.

Senior High ALTs typically enjoy the greatest stability in their situation as they have the opportunity to establish and develop relationships and rapport with students and staff alike because they are working in the same environment throughout the year. This compares against ALTs in other divisions who have to visit any number of schools per month and while they can take satisfaction in their interactions with students, have much less opportunity to lay down some roots than SHS ALTs do.

I should also let you know that once you get to Fukuoka and your new schools, you won't actually start teaching for about 3-4 weeks. This is because you arrive during Summer break and a major Japanese National holiday called Obon. During this time you will be spending alot of down time in the office doing a whole lot of nothing. It is pretty lackluster so think of a project ahead of time that you can focus on to keep busy. Most new ALTs work on their upcoming lesson plans, prepare their self-intro's, go through all the stuff their predecessor's left them, explore the building, or get to know the students (they come to school for morning classes during summer break and then participate in club activities in the afternoon).

Making Contact

No doubt that ever since you received word that you were accepted onto JET, you've been looking to make contact or hear more about what's going on. Don't worry, that's all in process.

Bureaucracy in Japan takes time but we have been working hard on preparing for your arrival. Two weeks ago we finalised the details of your exact placements. Your schools have been notified and they have begun their own preparations to receive you. Your predecessors should be in contact shortly. If you do not hear from your predecessors by July 9th, please let me know asap.

Tokyo and what comes after

I think that very shortly, if not already, you'll receive information about Tokyo Orientation as well as getting a copy of the JET General Information Handbook (GIH). Be sure to have a good read of that - or at least as much as you can manage - before coming to Japan. There's a lot of useful information there and is worth your time to check-out.

Tokyo Orientation is a lot of fun and your first chance to meet up with all the new JETs that are heading to other parts of the country. It may also be the last time you get to see some of the new buddies you make at your pre-departure Orientations so make the most of the few days you have in Tokyo.

There's really nothing else I need to say about Tokyo that the itinerary doesn't already say. If you do have questions about Tokyo though, feel free to ask me.

Once the Orientation concludes, you will be put on a flight bound for Fukuoka. For Group A JETs, that will be on Wednesday July 29th. Group B will be Wednesday August 5th. Both flights will arrive in Fukuoka by lunchtime.

When you arrive at Fukuoka airport, you will be met by at least one representative of your new school. At that point, reality starts to sink in. On that first afternoon, you'll be taken - most likely- to your new work place where you will be introduced to the staff and perhaps have a chance to meet some students.

Fukuoka Prefecture

No matter whereabouts you will end up being placed within Fukuoka, this is one of the best prefectures to be located for a lot of different reasons and we are often the envy of JETs living in other parts of Kyushu. In addition to having the luxury of having access to Fukuoka City's (specifically the Hakata and Tenjin areas) modern shopping arcades and outrageously good food but we also have lots of lush country beauty and are easily within reach of the other prefectures in Kyushu. Additionally, our geographic position makes us a very convenient location for travel to other parts of Asia via our two airports (Fukuoka Airport and New Kitakyushu Airport).

Sports fans can enjoy any number of professional teams with the Softbank Hawks baseball team playing to packed crowds at the 35,000 capacity Yahoo Dome, or, if you rather, the J2 League soccer team Avispa Fukuoka are the team of choice round these parts. We also have a rugby team as well so we are quite spoiled for a prefecture that sits beyond the Kanto and Kansai areas....

Best Regards,

Roman : )

--
Roman Montoya
Prefectural Advisor
Fukuoka Prefectural Board of Education
Senior High School Division
7-7 Higashi-koen, Hakata-ku
Fukuoka-shi, Fukuoka-ken 812-8575
Japan"

I am still waiting for my exact placement!

I am not the only one!

There was a discussion thread in the forums recently about bugs and spiders and roaches in Japan and I am not the only one who's freaked out by them! Lol...

Read this story! I hope I won't have like.. erm. many of the spiders.

The year of Ninja Spiders

Click on the above link! The story is quite funny anyway. I totally understand how the guy felt.

Where are the rest of the Singaporeans?

Well, it seems that there are going to be 18 Singapore ALTs and 2 CIRs.

One of the JETs have done up a google map to give a visual representation of where we are all distributed. Quite cool!



Though nobody is placed in the same prefecture as me, there are others on Kyushu island so if I am desperate for some Singlish, I will have people to visit over the weekend! =)

The fear of bugs...

From Meelynn

"The bugs are truly horrific but maybe Singapore, being more tropical, has comparable ones...keep in mind I come from upstate New York, where our worst bugs are mosquitoes and the OCCASIONAL cockroach in a dirty restaurant.

Common Fukuoka bugs are cockroaches, mosquitoes, cicadas in summer (my least favorite, ughhhh), huntsman spiders, and big wasps called suzumebachi. The only ones that will probably invade your house are cockroaches and mosquitoes.

For cockroach prevention you can set boric acid traps in your house. They look like little cookies in plastic squares, put them in corners and your roach problems should be near none. Roaches happen in the cleanest of homes unfortunately and they are gross but easyish to control.

Mosquito-wise, you can buy little electric domes that you will with some magic liquid that keeps them at bay. These work very very well somehow and are cheap and easy to find.

Don't worry too much about the bugs, you can also buy bugspray to kill all sorts of breeds of bug at drugstores, discount warehouse stores and convenience stores."

Can someone kill me now?

My apartment & rental

Meelynn (one of the current ALTs in Fukuoka) just told me that her rental is ¥12,100 which is only S$183 per month? That is really cheap!!!

And she also mentioned that I'll likely live in a kyoshokuin jutaku (public teacher's housing), "an old submarine-like apartment complex that while straight out of the Soviet Era cleans up nicely and is quite spacious." Hum... wonder how spacious is spacious.. which means there's alot to clean?

So it means I might live in an apartment like this:


Found this from the internet and it's posted by another ALT, Mike in Fukuoka.

My placement...

By now, most of you would have know that I am resigning from my job and leaving for Japan to teach. =) My last day at work will be 17th July and will depart for Tokyo on 1st August.

I have been assigned to teach in Fukuoka Prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu in Japan.

For those of you who don't know where's Fukuoka, here's a map!


Though sad to leave my family and friends, I am also very excited about it as I will be fulfilling one of my dreams - to live overseas by myself and immerse in a totally different culture!

Anyways, there's direct flight from Singapore to Fukuoka by Singapore Airlines! I just checked, it costs S$600 for peak season which means it will be even cheaper during off peak season! And it's even cheaper if it's transit flight... Cathay Pacific's ticket is $450...

P.S. Just realize that Fukuoka is nearer to Seoul than to Tokyo. LOL.

The Interview

Cut and paste from my blog on Feb 6, 2009

Since many of you are asking me how's my interview, I shall dedicate a long entry about the interview...

Thanks to yvonne, my new fren, I was more or less prepared for the interview because we got the same interviewers and some similar questions but some questions left me stumbling for answers. Feel kinda stupid. lol.

There were 3 interviewers, 2 Japanese (One is fatherly looking and the other reminded me of like what yvonne said, kinda reminded us of hiro from HEROES) and 1 foreigner.

Today I was kinda stressed out because we had chapel till 1.15pm and I had to rush home because I forgot to bring my passport to school. (Totally forgot that I don't have my IC because my bag was stolen on Sunday) and then there was some crazy jam at bkt timah, I reached Japan embassy at 2.15pm. LOL.

By the time I walk into the reception area, the lady was waiting for me at the counter and asked me if I am me. Lol. So stressful. I was panting. Haha..

So I was brought up to wait into a little cold room. I kept wondering if there was some security camera for them to watch me getting all stressed out in the room. And the hiro guy came in to fetch me.

Here are the questions that were asked based on my memory...

Hiro: Pls introduce yourself briefly.

Fatherly man:
1. I notice you teach many subjects and many levels. May I know more about what is Social Studies?
2. How many classes do you teach then since you have so many levels of preparation?
3. Can I find out how you cope with so many levels of preparation? How many lessons do you have to plan per week?
4. I notice you are in Data Management Committee, what kind of data do you collect?
5. Does your school do diagnostic tests for EL? Do you think such tests are useful?
6. Since your school do learning styles profiling & have a through train programme, do you notice any improvement in results?
7. You have taught for quite a couple of years, which teaching method you find most useful/helpful?
8. Do you have use any scientific method in measuring students' improvement or learning?
9. I notice you head NPCC, was vice head of Staff Welfare committee and organised many camps. Did you volunteer for all these positions?
10. Why do you think your school leaders assign you NPCC and Why did your colleagues nominate you for Staff Welfare? (Found this question most difficult to answer because you are like praising yourself!!!!)

Foreigner: (stumble with most of his questions, he kinda made me scared, i duno why, maybe because he seemed like an experienced EL teacher and I haven't taught EL for a looong time)
1. It seemed that you find building rapport with students very important. How will you try to build rapport with students when you teach in Japan?
2. How about young children? If you are placed in a elementary school, what kind of activities will you do to engage them and build rapport?
3. In your example used just now on teaching adjectives in class, I'm not intending to put you on the spot here but how will you explain to the students the difference between regular adjectives and irregular adjectives? Eg. Tall taller tallest are the common ones but there are others like exciting, more exciting. What is the structure that is used to define the difference? Wondering if you can pull this out from your memory. (I was totally shocked by this question and told him frankly that I don't remember).
4. So, if your students or your colleagues ask you this question and you obviously do not know/remember the answer, how will you respond to them?
5. I notice in your statement of purpose, you mentioned that you feel that you can adapt to Japan because you share the same Asian rootedness with Japanese. Can you further explain this statement?
6. In your daily work, you will actually be dealing with many different colleagues who are not Asians, then you do not share Asian roots, how will you adapt then?
7. You have travelled to many countries but they are all short stays, the longest is only 2 weeks. How are you so sure you can cope in Japan since you are staying for at least one year?
8. You mentioned that students have very short attention span in class and you have to constantly engage them with different activities, how can you ensure you have a supply of such activities?
9. You talked about having breaks during lessons to keep them engaged, can you elaborate more about these "breaks"?
10. In your future career plans, you mentioned that you will want to teach in international schools or private schools when you come back from JET. Can you explain your reasons why?
11. In international schools, they usually do IB program, what are your views towards IB? (Faints, I gave some answer about that it is not the programme that is important but what are the values and life skills that you impart at the end of the lesson that is important)
12. Do you think the role of teachers is weakened with promotion of IB or project work learning?

Hiro:
One last question - please introduce a place of interest in Japan, with details of the location and interesting sights that you will want to visit since you've never been to Japan. (throw me off totally. told him i've never been to japan and difficult for me to pin point an area but told him why i chose miyagi as my 1st choice to live in becoz it has a unesco site of pine trees and Kunmamoto because it has volcanoes and hot springs.

ALOT of questions right?!!! At first I was quite calm but the foreigner made me so nervous with some questions that I couldn't formulate my answers properly so that I think I was babbling by the mid of the interview. Lol. Not sure if good or bad because I was really babbling at the foreigner. The japanese men seem friendly but I thought Hiro looked bored and the foreigner had this deadpan look. Only moment of laughter was at the end when i described to Hiro why I wana visit Kunmamoto because I want to experience being on top of a live volcano and as a Geography teacher, it is strange that I teach all the earthquakes and volcanoes and not seen one before? Fatherly man laughed. Hiro just nodded while foreigner continued to scribble more. Oh well. Haha..

And then when I was ushered back to the waiting room, met an Indian guy who was waiting for his turn. During this brief moment of interaction, I discovered he was also a sec sch teacher we started laughing because his principal is the husband of my Vice principal. Singapore is really too small.

Anyway, I am just so glad this is over. Now is the long wait for results.