JET Program Placement!

On Wednesday, June 15th I found out my placement. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect location. I will be living and teaching (for at least the next year of my life - hopefully more!) in beautiful Miyama town, Kihoku city, in Mie Prefecture! (A prefecture is basically a state)

Here, let me show you:

Here you can see all of Japan. The "A" Marker is my town.

Then we zoom in to the Osaka/Nagoya area. As a prefecture, Mie snakes down the coast.

Here we get a little closer. Owase is the next biggest town just over the mountain to the South. Aiga is the name of my train station. The actual town is called Miyama.

And here it is! The striped black/white line is the train. There is one convenience store in town.

It looks as if I will be living in paradise. This photo was taken from a mountain in the bottom left corner of the photo just above.

I have briefly made contact with my predecessor, so more details will come later! I know for a fact that I will be teaching at Junior High and Elementary schools, and by looking at maps, I suspect that I have 2 Junior High Schools and 5 Elementary Schools. This may sound like a lot, but I suspect that the elementary schools probably have no more than 30 kids each, and I can't see the JHS's having any more than 150 each.

It's also looking like I won't be needing a car, which is awesome! As far as travel, I am ~5 hours from Tokyo by train, ~4 hours from both Osaka and Nagoya, and ~2 hours from Tsu/Ise (some of the bigger cities in Mie to the north). One other JET from SF is going to Mie with me, and he/she will be going to the town of Kumano (a 45 min train ride south of Miyama). I will be meeting this person on Sunday, and I suspect that we will become good friends!

Six weeks from today, THIS is where I will be living! Life is way too good right now!

Stay tuned for more updates!

Jordan