How to get on the JET Programme Part 2 - The Interview

I promised a second part to my primer for hopeful JET applicants. For those of you who got letters for interviews, congratulations! Now it's time to prove yourself.

There isn't too much I can say on the interview - probably everyone who's applying for JET will have been interviewed for something before. The same rules apply - dress smartly, be polite and show what you're made of.

The interview day is in two stages. After arriving and sitting around, possibly being able to watch the most recent JET promotional video, you'll be asked to sit a short test. For anyone who's done the Cambridge CELTA and remembers the pre-course tasks, it's a bit like that, but simpler. It takes 5-10 minutes. You don't have to know any complicated grammar, but you do have to correct a short piece of writing. It also tests things like vocabulary, asking you to match a word with one of three/four synonyms. The test isn't the kind of thing you can prepare for, since you don't know exactly what will come up, but it's not something to worry about. I know I got at least one thing wrong from my test, and I made it through.

The most important part of the day is the actual interview. It is usually conducted by one native English speaker and one Japanese person. The interview is designed to find out if you are up to being a teacher and working with students, and, perhaps more importantly, whether you will be able to live in a foreign country for an extended period of time.

There are no right answers to the questions they will ask, but here are my hot tips:
On education:
-stress the importance of communication skills in language learning, particularly oral communication
-show due deference to the admittedly broken approach to teaching in Japan - show you're willing to work with the system to improve things
-remember you will be team teaching, so stress your willingness to cooperate with experience Japanese teachers of English
-have some ideas for classroom activities you'd like to try - games and tasks with a focus on communication and learning

On living abroad:
-they will ask at least one question about how you think you will get on in a foreign country
-stress any prior experience of travel or living abroad you have
-be prepared for apparently irrelevant questions - I got "What do you eat?" from the Japanese guy at my interview (possibly poor English on his part) and I was like "What has that got to do with anything?" and spluttered nonsense until I realised I was being asked if I'd be able to get by on Japanese food, albeit in a retarded way
-try to have some knowledge of Japan's socio-economic situation/current political climate. I wasn't asked what I knew about Japan, but I'm aware of others who have. Check out the English websites of Asahi Shimbun, Japan Times or Daily Yomiura to get a feel for things
-of course, show your willingness, nay - eagerness to learn the Japanese language. You've already learned hiragana, you say, and can't wait to learn katakana and some kanji.


If you keep these things in mind it should stand you in good stead.

Night Person

Night Person is a 'perk' in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas that you can take on levelling up, giving you +2 to both Intelligence and Perception. I bring it up because I think I have this in real life. My brain always works better at night. I've always done my best work in the evenings, from writing short stories in high school to essays at university. During the day I can't get anything done.

A few days ago I was trying to get over my late nights and late mornings by going to bed a little after ten. I was feeling fairly tired so I thought I might be fine. Unfortunately, I woke several times during the night, didn't sleep well at all and still ended up waking at 10.30am. Epic fail.

I spent much of yesterday working on something for a writing competition. I had a lot of difficulty with it because the word limit is 250 words. I redrafted several times and still didn't get anywhere. As soon as I lay down to sleep, however, at the quasi-realistic time of 1.30am, my mind was abuzz with ideas for it. I couldn't sleep knowing that these ideas might be gone in the morning, so I had to jot them down in my notebook, but that wasn't enough to settle my mind so I had to watch TV for an hour to calm myself down.

Anyway, back to it.

New Vague Arse

The other day I finished what has been my biggest distraction from productivity over the last couple of weeks, namely Fallout: New Vegas. On the Playstation 3. It's been a long time (a very very long time) since a game has managed to so wholly suck me in and lose all concept of the passage of real world time. It didn't seem to matter that there were countless bugs in the game or that it crashed rather a lot. It's the best western RPG since Planescape: Torment. And that's saying something.

It kind of messed up my sleep schedule, though, as now I can't seem to get to sleep before 3am and can't get up before noon. But now it's over. New Vegas has held onto its independence. I can go back to my regular, less pronounced level of unproductiveness.

Super Dry JPN Cult

I've started seeing people wearing Super Dry JPN coats everywhere. They're all navy blue and seem to have replaced North Face as the jacket of choice among today's casual jacket wearer.

It's not just jackets, though. There are t-shirts and hoodies with the names of Japanese cities emblazoned on the front, along with some nonsensical kanji. I wondered if the Super Dry brand was related to Asahi Super Dry, one of the most ubiquitous and popular Japanese lagers, but apparently they're made by Supergroup, which is a British company. Should've guessed from the nonsensical kanji. Probably reads to a Japanese (or indeed a Chinese) person like some of my Japanese clothing does to us. Example:

Whenever I see a t-shirt that says "Osaka" or "Okayama" I want to shout, "You haven't even BEEN there! You don't know!"

Frustration

I got stood up today.

I was supposed to be teaching my Japanese guy to help him prepare for some job interviews he'll be having soon. We had a lesson yesterday and were supposed to have one today at 5.30, then he changed it to 5 during yesterday's lesson.

I got to Starbucks just before 5, got a drink and waited. I listened to Adam and Joe interviewing Roger Moore. Sir Roger Moore. 5.05 and he wasn't there. 5.15 similarly. 5.20 I thought maybe he'd forgotten he'd changed the time to 5. So I sat tight and thought he might roll in some time around or after 5.30. Waited and hoped.

I don't like situations where I'm meant to be annoyed with people in real life. I love getting annoyed at things I have no power to change. But I hate confrontation and this was starting to turn into a real cause for it. He'd cancelled several lessons last minute recently and now he hadn't shown up. I had/have every right to be annoyed about it. But I'm always making excuses for other people in these situations. I give myself reasons why other people's shocking behaviour is forgivable. He didn't have my mobile number, for instance. He might have tried to email me.

I had his number, however. I couldn't manage an angry text message. The best I could manage was, "What happened?"

WHAT HAPPEN?

If SOMEBODY SET US UP THE BOMB then maybe that counts as mitigating circumstances.

As it transpired, and as I discovered when I finally left and got the bus home at 5.50, he had emailed me. But at 4.45, long after I'd already got a bus into town. He says some retired people from his company came round and he had to blah blah blah. I know the Japanese loyalty is meant to be to the company, but when you've got an appointment with someone fifteen minutes later you should have the decency to say, "I'm sorry, I can't lick corporate arse today, I have a prior engagement."

He's just sent an email while I've been typing here, promising that it will never happen again. I bloody well hope not.

Rage blackout.

Money money money

A long-awaited day has come. My Japanese pension refund notification arrived today. Soon they should be paying the money into my account. Only took four or five months.

It's an awful lot of money (well, in relative terms). The problem I have is that I can't really do anything with it. I'm all about prudent investment, when I'm not busy buying computer games and faster computers to run them on. This amount, though allowing me to splurge if I so desired, isn't enough to do anything really cool. I can't buy a house with it. If I had a job I suppose it would be enough to pay a deposit on a cheap flat and get a mortgage, but I don't have a real job. A car might be fun, but I'm still learning how to drive and cars are the worst investments ever because they depreciate faster than anything. Also, the tax and insurance would drain me down to nothing in short order.

I've pondered the idea of just taking the money and using it to move into a flat and live off for ten months or whatever, and in that time become rich and successful. Could happen.

In the meantime, I'm dancing with Liza.

We can has panda nao?

Edinburgh zoo is getting pandas!

I think the staff at the zoo will be rubbing their hands with glee now that the deal has been finalised. They sent their polar bear (the only one in the UK) up north to give it a bigger enclosure and I get the impression the zoo has been a bit rubbish in recent years. When I was doing the CELTA, Maria in my group used the zoo's tourist information leaflet as her authentic material, and the place seems to have a lot less to it than it did when I used to go as a child. Two pandas ought to bring in the crowds. Everybody loves pandas.

I'm taking it as a sign that I shouldn't go back to Asia. Or that I don't need to. I keep thinking about how easy it would be to just get a teaching job in Japan (at least, it seems pretty easy) and then I could just lounge around in Japan for another few years. But no, we're getting pandas. It is not necessary to go back.

I saw pandas once in a zoo/adventure theme park in Wakayama Prefecture. It was expensive to get there on the train (it was nestled in the deep south of the prefecture), expensive to get into the park, and then the food on offer was mostly awful. The park was okay. We rode about in a panda car (that is, a car shaped like a panda) and fed giraffes by hand. Also, there were baby pandas, which are the best kind of panda.

We're getting a breeding pair, though, so it's possible that in time, with patience and panda porn, we'll have our own baby pandas.
Though all panda babies born to couples abroad remain property of the Communist Party of China, Beijing.