Preparation seminar, June 26th and 27th, 2010

Two weeks ago I attended the semi-voluntary Pre-Pre departure Orientation in Vancouver. The orientation lasted two days, with the first day being seminars on how to adjust to living and working in Japan, paying your taxes and managing your Japanese money, what to do from now until we arrive in Tokyo and your first month in Japan, what to do when you come back from Japan, and finally a Q and A session with JET Alumni.

The first day was held at the Coast Coal Harbour Hotel in downtown Vancouver. I was silly and forgot my camera at home the first day so I don't have any pictures. There were about 100 people there, not including the other JET alumni and speakers. Courtesy of the Internet, this is the ballroom where it took place



The above picture is actually a poor representation of the size of this room. What's shown here is really only maaaaybe half of the room.
Plus, the layout was of course quite different. It was massive.

Having an active presence on the JET forums answered many of the questions I could have had coming to this preparation seminar. However, they were able to directly answer or confirm my answers to some of my other questions, such as, am I allowed to smile in my Alien registration card photo? And so on. It also made me think of loads of questions that I should ask my Supervisor, Kawahara sensei, or my pred, Melody.

I think the best seminars for me were the Culture Shock and Managing your Money/Taxes. I now have a much better grasp on what to do when these come up, which are both a bit inevitable.

After the first day, they held a bit of a reception down the road, at a pub where they served many appies. It was nice to relax after the long day and get to talk one on one with some of the JET Alumni. I met both my interviewers again :)

The second day of the seminar was held at BCIT in one of their downtown campuses. There were only about 30 people here this day. The seminar was held solely on working in Japan in Japanese classrooms. I liked this seminar, but I felt with my teaching background a lot of it was common sense for me already. I think there could be a little bit more emphasis on what to expect when you create a lesson plan and it just bombs, and how to handle situations like that.

So all in all, I took a lot of useful information away from the seminar, and got to connect with a lot of great people! It was worth the trip!

My JET Interview March 3rd, 2010.

It's been a few months since I had my interview, but I'll talk about some of the questions that I was asked. I wont really go over the general questions that they asked, because there are 100s of lists out there that have these questions on them.

Over all I didn't think I had a great interview, perhaps only a B performance, but I think I gave it my best.

I had prepared extensively for my interview, reading, studying, doing everything possible. I had prepared answers to some of the most commonly asked questions. However, the way they were asked, made my prepared answers nonsensical.
Some questions were (paraphrased of course):
What would you like to learn about Japanese Culture?
Give us an example of a time when you were in a difficult or awkward situation and how you dealt with it.
How would you teach about Canada and internationalism and what materials would you use?
How would I deal with being a foreigner in a small town or village where there is very little privacy and everyone knows you and your daily life?
Why would you like to join JET?
Why do you want to go to Japan?

Because I'm a bit of a lazy but, here's a post I made in my other Journal just after my interview:

"Had my JET interview yesterday. While initially I felt good about how it went, the more I think about it, the more I kick myself thinking, shit. I really should have answered with this ____ . Some of the questions they asked me I guess I had thought about prior to going in, but hadn't really given the correct type of thought were about Japanese Culture. They asked me a few times about what I'd like to learn about Japanese culture and at the time I blaanked. T_T. I think I ended up spewing some mumbojumbo about Japanese sociolinguistics. Instead of "I'm very interested in ALL THIS JAPANESE STUFF THAT I'M LEGITIMATELY INTERESTED IN." So not feeling the love on those questions. The one thing I think I answered well on was when they asked me to introduce myself in Japanese, and I whipped out my pre-prepared Keigo introduction. They looked impressed, so that's good. But then at the end they said that my level of Japanese doesn't actually matter.

My interview went on for a while, really into overtime. (probably about 30-35 minutes) They didn't ask me to teach them anything, (though they did ask me about what kind of things I would use to teach about Canada, and what kind of methods. This is one of the questions where I'm kicking myself stupid over.) but I think that's because they asked so many other questions.

Gosh, they asked me so much stuff that I'm having trouble remembering it all.

I think it went fine, but if I think it went fine too much, I'll start thinking they thought it was fine, which maybe they didn't. I guess I'm just trying not to get my hopes up, when I seriously think I screwed the pooch on some key elements they were looking for."

After about 15 minutes in my interview, they wrapped things up and asked if I had any questions, which I did. I asked them how new JETs get ushered into Japanese school systems in August, and how that can affect the English Class rooms. I also asked them about why certain prefectures did not request any JET teachers. After this it seemed to have prompted them to ask a few more questions. They asked me some questions about Mike, and I mentioned about how we're financially independant of each other and how he really wouldn't be a burden on my job there. They asked a lot of questions and ended up going on for another 15 minutes or so. I think this was something good in my favour haha.

So luckily for me, I got in!
This past weekend at our Pre-pre-departure orientation I met two of my three interviewers, one happened to be Steve, the JET programme Coordinator, and Christopher Baily, the Senior Advisor of the JET Alumni Association. TENSO. I'm glad I didn't know this at my interview. I would have been much more nervous.

I think I could talk about this forever :) But I'll end here for tonight! next time on JET channel, the Pre-predeparture Orientation!