JET sending people to the boonies?

[Deadhead]

Ive heard that recently JET has been sending people to small towns in Japan.

I have also heard that being a gaijin in a small town sucks, there is nothing to do. Some people have told me that the boonies are annoying, because nobody(I have heard this happens in the cities too, but not nearly as often) believes that a silly gaijin could learn Japanese.

I dunno, Any JETs wanna come in and enlighten me? This stuff true, or just BS ive heard?

[Joe]

The japanese teacher at my school was sent to a small town in Hokkaido. I'm not sure if she was a Jet though.

[Azrael]

Well, think about it. Is there any need to send foreigners to big cities? If you're a program trying to spread internationalization, wouldn't it be more productive to send foreigners to the little nooks and crannies of the country that no one would ordinarly have a mind to visit? Places where, if not for you, the people would never see a foreigner, never in their lives? I'd say you have a better chance living out in the ride paddies than you do living in the heart of some technologically advanced big city.

Small cities can be rough, but it all depends on how you deal with it. Many JET's who suffer in small cities buy a car, and their outlook/attitude changes tremendously.

And the Japanese don't believe that foreigners can speak Japanese no matter where you go. Part of this is Japanese attitudes and beliefs, yes...but the majority of foreigners who do come can't speak any Japanese, so we're not really showing them any different.

[Deadhead]

I understand that the 'you cant possibly be speaking Japanese' thing happens everywhere, but what I was told is that it happens way more often in rural areas.

I made this posts after hearing some horror stories.

[bloop]

My friend is an inaka JET - she was sent to a small island off Kyushu. The things that she complains most about is that gossip runs rampant. From Az's editorials, you can already know people like to gossip, but imagine being maybe one of 5 gaijin in a town of 1000. Everyone knows everybody else, and you can't avoid anyone. Also, if you don't speak any Japanese, then it'll be tougher because many people will not be able to speak English (including supervisors and people at the BOE). It might be very boring and isolating. She was also paraded around, though she's Asian American, so she wasn't on display as much as others.

There are good points though. You're part of a small community in the rural areas, and you'll be there for a while. People generally will be nice if you live with them everyday - can't upset the WA and all that good stuff. People will get to know you.
I visited a rural area when I was in Japan, and the people there told me that the school (elementary plus junior high) only had about 30 students total. That's fewer than what most classes have. A lot easier to handle a class of 4 than a class of 30. My friend also has a car so she can get to the small nearby city if she really wanted to.

If you have your heart set on a big city, then yeah, you'll be disappointed and miserable. My friend was, at first. Now she's staying on for a second year, so there must be some redeeming parts.
She'll still jump at the chance to get away sometimes, but I don't think she would want to be transferred to a city after being in the boonies.

[ex-jet]

I am a former JET who lived in a very rural town (pop. 12,000) in Japan. I agree with what Azrael and bloop have written. Before I get into my perspective on the issue, I just wanted to give the standard JET disclaimer of Every Situation is Different (ESID). If you haven't heard this expression already, you will if you do decide to get involved with JET. Anyway, I just don't want to come across as if I think my experience of rural Japan is in any way definitive.

To your second question about rural Japanese having a hard time believing a gaijin can speak Japanese, I'd say a lot depends on who your predecessor was. If your predecessor (and your predecessor's predecessor spoke fluent Japanese) don't be surprised to have people come at you full blast with Japanese right from the start.

If, on the other hand, your predecessor could barely string together a sentence at the grocery store to ask where the plastic wrap was without a lot of face scrunching and gestures, then many people may have a hard time accepting that you really DO understand the words that are coming out of their mouths. You would think that the fact you are speaking Japanese at twice the speed of their exaggeratedly slow speech would be a hint that your Japanese is not at the level of a mentally challenged Japanese 3 year old. And in many cases you would be wrong.

In my situation, there had been a history of both private ALTs and JETs who were proficient to fluent in Japanese, in addition to folks who couldn't speak even after living in the area for 3+ years. What that meant for me was many people would be apprehensive about my Japanese ability at first, but were not overly surprised or uncomfortable with the idea of me speaking Japanese after talking to me. Yes, I did still encounter people that refused no matter what to believe I could speak/understand Japanese , but I believe some of those situations were cases of willful ignorance because the person really just wanted to practice their English.

In any case, I felt this phenomena was more pronounced in cities like Kyoto and even Tokyo. There, many of the foreigners that Japanese people (particularly folks in customer service type of jobs) encountered were tourists or English teachers living in a gaijin bubble. For a number of those Japanese people, foreigner= English just like 2+2=4. You would have just as much luck convincing them 2+2= 1,897,451,223 as you would trying to persuade them that Japanese is the appropriate language of communication with you.

Moral of the story is this: the more experience the Japanese people you will be interacting with have with a Japanese speaking foreigner, the more likely they will be to believe that you can learn Japanese. This factor will play a much bigger role in how people respond to you than the rural vs. urban variable. Oh yea, and if you are of Asian descent the likelihood of Japanese people accepting the idea of you speaking Japanese increases exponentially.

As for your first question about the countryside being boring, again I think it depends. The JET Program, almost from the very start, has had a very strong emphasis on sending ALTs to rural areas. If you are dead-set against being in a rural area it may not be worth your while to go through the hassle of applying. My experience has been that those who go into the situation with an open-mind end up really enjoying living in the countryside. Just as an example, during my time on JET, I knew seven foreigners living in my area who later moved to larger cities like Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya and some smaller urban areas. Every single one of them said they liked living in our town BETTER than living in the city. And none of them was particularly gung-ho about living in the countryside when they first came to Japan.

For me personally, I loved it--which is why stayed three years (2001-2004). First of all the scenery was beautiful. The fresh mountain air was good for the soul. Second of all, there were a number of people who really looked out for me. I was able to make friends around my age (20s-30s) who invited me to outdoor yakiniku barbeques, drinking parties, nabe parties etc. They taught me various Japanese drinking games and did not hesitate to get buck wild and do crazy stuff all the time. The pubic hair burning incident comes to mind... Then there are festivals and local events. Also the very small English teacher community was really close-knit my first two years.

Don't get me wrong-- the countryside definitely had more than its share of slow moments. Furthermore you will have virtually no privacy when it comes to dating. If I wanted to go clubbing, bar-hopping, meeting random J-girls, etc. I had to go to the city i.e Nagoya (though Osaka was my favorite by far) for that. Japanese rural life is not for everyone, but if you keep an open mind and really want to see Japan from more of an insider’s perspective, then the countryside can be just the ticket. Of course a car is a must. I think the ideal situation for me would have been to be placed in a small town about 20 min by train/car from a large city, instead of being 2 hours north of Nagoya. But all things considered I was very satisfied with my time in Japan and do not have any regrets about not being placed in a city.

One final comment: I would be skeptical of anyone that tries to tell you what your situation on JET will be like. The discrepancies among individual JET circumstances (even among those living in the same town/city) is unbelievable.

[Deadhead]

Another thing. How cold is Hokkaido? Im a minnesota native, and it gets pretty cold up here (like 20 degrees above to 30 below during the winter).

Im not a huge fan of the cold though, so whats it like there?

[Dana]

I am living in a small town right now (11,000 people) and as far as I know I am the only foreigner here. Everyone in town knows who I am. They all either have a kid or a grandkid or a cousin or a niece or nephew, etc that I teach. Like ex-jet said, I think the experience of living in a small town all depends on how you approach it.

The people in my town are incredibly nice and its beautiful here but I would be lying if I said that it wasn't hard when I first got here. I had no mode of transport save my bike and my two feet. There is no public transportation to speak of here, no train station and only two or three busses a day. Me living on a mountain makes it hard for me to go anywhere on my own. I really had to depend on others or suffer the boredom of my apartment. But it got better. I got internet and a VCR and figured out things I could do around town to amuse myself, and also discovered the highway bus that will take me into Tokyo for 1700 yen. Life has improved exponentially for me since I got my scooter. Its no longer a problem for me to go to the train station 8km away, or into Kofu, a fairly large city which is about 15km away.

There are plusses and minuses to the privacy issue. On the plus side, its kind of nice to have people honk at you and wave every morning. It makes you feel like if you went missing, somebody would actually notice. People do things for me because I am the token foreigner.

But at the same time, I have to admit that I get sick of the attention. People do stare, and at first I thought it was funny but then I went through a phase where I got really offended. Now I kind of just ignore it. Anything you do will be noticed in a small town. I once had a guy friend over for the weekend and the next monday at school all my students were asking me who my "boyfriend" was. I couldn't believe that the fact that I came out of my apartment with a guy was news-worthy enough for them all to know.

I am really enjoying my time here, but if I do stay another year I will move into Kofu because I want both experiences, living in the country-side and living in the city in Japan. I don't think I could handle Tokyo though. Its too crowded and fast for my tastes ^_^

[Jess]

I lived in a small town in Kagawa-ken on Shikoku island for my two years in Japan (2000-2002). I think I was lucky in the town I got, because, despite the small town attitude and typical ignorance of gaijin, there was a large component of the population that was interested in internationalization.

Gossip mill was going strong - my first weekend there I walked to the local bookstore and bought the last 21 volumes of Rurouni Kenshin (since I already owned the first 7). I got the prerequisite stares and mumblings, but was smiling and friendly as I happily lugged my purchase home. I would hear people, 2 months later, that weren't there, bring up the purchase with me. So I know the whole town was talking about it. Made me very nervous about simple things such as buying feminine hygiene products, let me tell you. (Have others found that they always wrap these in opaque black plastic bags...as if that somehow HIDES what the purchase is?) I was even gossiped about in neighboring towns. There was one Mountain Dew machine, about a 20 minute bike ride from my apartment in the next town over. I knew (I know, it's pathetic, but that's what it's like in Japan sometimes) the machine refilling schedule, and would bike down and buy the machine out whenever I could (small machine, I usually got only 6 cans. :( ) The ALT in the neighboring town taught an eikaiwa class for adults, and assigned essays one time. One old man actually wrote his essay about the strange gaijin woman who rides into town every week and buys all the mountain dew. He wondered if he would get curly red hair if he drank it too. XD

On bad days, the attention wore on me. I actually had a good screaming match in the teachers room once, in a strange mixture of bad Japanese and emotional English, explaining that I was NOT going to be on display at sports festival. On the trains, when grouchy, I would be the rude gaijin and take up two seats on the train with no regard for anyone else. But I was able, in most cases, to simply be amused.

In a small town you'll run into a lot of people both fascinated by and completely ignorant of gaijin. We had one old codger who spoke such heavy Sanuki-ben we couldn't understand a word - so he grabbed my hand and started writing what I could only assume was kanji on my palm - as if we were Chinese! I've had women in the grocery store hide their children behind them when they saw me coming. And I had one woman exclaim that I had to like beer because it was America poi.

You will be able to see so much more of the town's culture though. For example, in my town there was the owner of the book store, a guy that was absolutely nuts, in a totally harmless way. He wore the same thing every day - florescent green 80's style jogging shorts and a white tank undershirt. On winter days he might wear a windbreaker. He would spend about 3/4 of the day stretching in the middle of the street in front of his store. Everytime I came in, he'd show me his Astroboy figure in the glass case, and hand me promotional posters...a frightening number of them were manga style drawings of naked women. O_o

I loved being in a small town...and I had no car, even. Just a bike that I rode a LOT and the train system. You just have to be able to adjust. :)

[Monkey]

I had a friend who specifically asked to be placed in a rural district.

He felt that it would be far to easy to just sink into an english wallow in one of the major cities, not speaking japanese except when you have to, only socialising with other gaijin etc.

He actually wanted to get out there and improve his Japanese and he knew it would be too tempting to just relax if he was in a big city so instead he specifically requested an area where he would have to use Japanese and study hard at it too.

Gotta admire him for that, personally I'd be going back to Japan again just for fun not for study so I'll probably go to Osaka next time and just check out the pubs and clubs there ;)

[erbiumfiber]

Another thing. How cold is Hokkaido? Im a minnesota native, and it gets pretty cold up here (like 20 degrees above to 30 below during the winter).

Im not a huge fan of the cold though, so whats it like there?

It's not that cold in Hokkaido- nothing like Minnesota, it NEVER (well hardly ever I think) gets below zero on the Farenheit scale. Very snowy but that's about it- some of the best skiing in Japan- I've got to go next year!

The only problem with the cold is that there is no central heating in the houses. But if you live in a small apartment-a given for a JET- then you should be able to keep your room pretty warm with a kerosene heater or even an electric heater.

Plus the summers are lovely in Hokkaido and the whole area is just beautiful so don't hesitate about selecting Hokkaido...

[Pfalzer]

Bieng asian american and not speaking japanese in japan is being a french man in france speaking texan slang its like
wtf

[Sbabbari]

I have a friend who is a JET living in the boonies in a tiny farm town outside Okayama (Ochiai-cho, for the record). She absolutely hated it when she first got there, because the local pastime is like farming or something. The closest movie theater or any sort of entertainment is an hour and a half away by car.

[hanacker]

In any case, I felt this phenomena was more pronounced in cities like Kyoto and even Tokyo. There, many of the foreigners that Japanese people (particularly folks in customer service type of jobs) encountered were tourists or English teachers living in a gaijin bubble. For a number of those Japanese people, foreigner= English just like 2+2=4. You would have just as much luck convincing them 2+2= 1,897,451,223 as you would trying to persuade them that Japanese is the appropriate language of communication with you.

Moral of the story is this: the more experience the Japanese people you will be interacting with have with a Japanese speaking foreigner, the more likely they will be to believe that you can learn Japanese. This factor will play a much bigger role in how people respond to you than the rural vs. urban variable.

That's my experience too. In Nara, and to some degree Osaka, many people would come at me with full-speed Japanese and more or less expect me to understand (I'm white, btw). They wouldn't exactly be surprised if I didn't speak Japanese well, but most of the time it seemed that they weren't really thrilled to have to explain in gestures/broken English. In Tokyo I'd ask people questions in not-that-horrible-Japanese and people would respond in painfully slow English. I think it is a case of how often people have to deal with foreigners/use English on a daily basis.