Certification

So I have decided to get TEFL certification for those of you who do not know that is Teach English as a Foreign Language Certification. I am doing this in hopes that it will assist me in getting into the JET program. There is only one drawback... It is a real pain in the ass! I am attempting to finish it with in the next several weeks to meet the application deadline but it is taking longer than I had expected. I hope that I can mussle through it soon and finish ahead of schedule treating it like a band aid that I am ripping off quickly as oppose to pulling it off lowly and painfully.

few questions

School has started back and I have decided to get TEFL Certification in the next month so I can stack my deck a little before I apply for JET in September. has anyone out there done this? is it easy? It sounds to me like a hoop that you have to jump through to get better odds of acceptance. I really hope that I am not just trowing away my cash and I get some insight from it. Oh ya, for those of you who live or have lived in Japan, how long did it take to get use to speaking Japanese or at leaste comfortable with normal every day tasks such as getting food, and how much Japanese training did you have before you went?

experiences, life, learning and relationships.

Other than waiting to apply, or finding something to occupy myself for a year or two before I can accomplish my goal, the most difficult side of the JET program goal is my current relationship. Ashley loves Japan, she has been obsessed with it sense she was a little girl. Her minor in college is Japanese, her art often focuses on Asian cultures, she loves eating Japanese food, etc. She is the one that told me the name of the JET program. I think she regrets this last one. even though she loves Japan and is facinated about it, she dosent know if she wants to apply to it. She wants me to wait another year for her to get out of school so we can apply together, assuming she decides to apply at all. this dosent make any sense to me, even if we applied together we don't want to go to the same place, even if we did want to go to the same place I don't think they would place us there. Also I don't want to do this with some one that I know. If I did then I don't think I would get the same out of the experience. She has become fairly spiteful about any aspect of it. Me learning Japanese makes her upset especially if I learn a word that she dosent know or make a mistake when studying. To her saving my money for the cause seems pointless because I haven't been accepted yet. She thinks I am a fool to leave my Job that I really do love for some thing that I don't know if I will enjoy or not. Heck she doesn't even read this blog even though I talk about it and the other blogs that I read all the time. When I apply in late August or September I assume we will have a huge knock down drag out fight about it and the same if I get an interview or accepted.

Her concerns and emotional qualms have a base to them. She knows that if I am accepted it is probably the end of our relationship. I guess that is a horrible thing to say but it is within all likely hood true. I guess this project is fairly selfish on my part but I think it is to great an opportunity to pass up.

home to Tokyo

so my friend Teaki or Takeru is moving back home to Tokyo on Monday. I am going to hang out with him for the last time tonight. I have known teak for about 6 years now he is a very charismatic person who has this crazy ability to make most people want to help him. but he let some paper work laps and all those that wanted to help him could not so he has to go back home for an extended stay for the first time in many years. I must say that I will miss him a lot but hopefully he will get his paper work fixed and will come back in the next year. On the bright side, if it takes him longer then I can go see him if I don't get into the JET program!

As of late

So the semester is over and now I am worrying about how to retain all of the information that I have learned over the last 4 months untill I get to my next class in the fall. I think that I will use lists that I am making from Iknow.jp.co along with videos from a web sight that my sensei told me about that her husband was the host of http://www.gpb.org/irasshai. These videos are really funny in that I cant believe how bad this is funny and they were filmed in the late 80s to early 90s so that just adds to the atmosphere. but there are a nice number of these videos so I will give them a shot in the interest of not loosing what I have learned. more over I will communicate with Ashley as much as I can that does seem to help us both in our studies.

I would like to send out a huge congratulations to Sean from the blog flyingsound. He was accepted into the JET program and is awaiting assignment. The more people I see achieve their goal in getting into JET and the more people I meet that have been in it. The more I feel that it is an achievable goal. All I have to do now is wait for application time and get to it. It is kind of scary, this single goal has become the main focal point of my life as of late. Most things that I have done as of the last 6 or so months has been with the thought "This can or could help me get into the JET program or could help me if I get into the JET program." I hope that it is not all for naught.

Dream

Last night I had an odd dream. I get rejected from the JET program. So I decide to take the money that I have been saving and go to Japan any ways. I buy my ticket, which costs a measly 50 bucks (I am budgeting for a $2000.oo ticket), hop on the plane, and fly over there. The flight only takes a hour in the dream. Once the plane lands, I decide to walk around Japan. In my through the city that I landed in, I some how manage to get to an old country road that is totally abandoned. After walking a little while I come upon two individuals who talk to me in Japanese, Which I some how understand clearly. Next a third person walks up to us and tells me that I need to speak to him in English because my Japanese is terrible. While speaking to him I learn that he is my real life friend Toby. At this point he shows me around the city and explains what he has been doing for the past year in Japan and talks about how he has fallen in love with the culture and has decided to never come back. After that I decide that it is time for me to come back to the USA and I tell him that I will come see him on the weekends because it is so cheap and easy to get there. When I arrive at the airport I run in to my professor, Cook Sensei. She asks me if I enjoyed visiting, to which I respond, "that I love this place. It just makes me sad that I cannot stay." At which point Ashley wakes me up by turning on the lights to find some cloths that she needed. When I woke up I was filled with disappointment. I wonder what Sigmund Freud would say about that.

places to live

When applying for the JET program, every one gets to name a place that they would like to be sent to. Not that it is a guarantee that you would be put there but it is still nice to be able to have a say in it. I have done a little research into interesting cities and have found a ton of them. In the next few posts I would like to introduce them starting with my first choice Sapporo. I like living in a city with the population density of Birmingham, it seems to be a nice balance. Birmingham and its metro area contain about 1,100,000 people and the city is about 150 sq miles. Sapporo on the other hand has about 1,800,000 people and is about 3X’s the size of Birmingham. Though it is larger than Birmingham its population density is still probably higher in reality because the cities size includes mountains that are not often inhabited by large numbers of people. Also, I like the cold and the average annual temperature in Sapporo is about 55 degrees Fahrenheit. More over Sapporo gets 190 inches of snow a year. I have only experienced “real” snow (more than a 2 or 3 inches) 3 times in my life that I can remember. I have been told that it doesn’t take long to get tired of snow but I am willing to give it a shot. Speaking of snow Sapporo has an annual snow festival every year which includes ice sculptures! Sounds like a blast to me.
Good food is a huge necessity for me and Sapporo is known for Curry soup and miso ramen both sound super tasty to me. It also doesn’t hurt that they have a famous brewery there that makes Sapporo beer and that they have an annual festival that includes beer gardens and food during the summer. All and all this place sounds ideal for me. Next post Ill get off the north island and talk about a place that is a little warmer.

What would I bring

So I was reading another JET hopefuls blog Flying sound. He has just finished the interview process of the application and recounted some of the questions that they asked him. This has given me a ton to think about. The most worry some question was "what would you bring to Japan to teach people about America?" After a few days of thinking about what I would do I decided that I would bring my cooking skills. Several great advantages of this; first is that taking a skill instead of an item takes up much less space in my luggage, second is that every one like food! Thinking about it food is one of the biggest defining factors of any and all culture,s so it seems like one of the easiest ways to teach about America.

Japanese progress

It has been a month sense I have started going back to college to learn Japanese and I must say that I love it! It is such a logical language. So far I think I am keeping up fairly well with the curriculum and i have been studying other aspects of Japanese in my free time so hopefully one day my several ways of learning it will converge and I will jump ahead of my current standing as a Japanese 101 student. I have employed several methods to study outside of class. I have been using Rosetta stone software to learn straight up expressions and sentences. I spent some time reading the Japanese for Dummies book and though it was fun and it helped a little. More over I bought a Nintendo DS and the Japanese Coach game. It is really great to learn tons of vocabulary and I can use it anywhere which is a huge plus. I watch anime with no subtitles just to listen to them talk and then I re watch it with sub Oh yah and I make note cards ... hundreds and hundreds of them :( I think at the rate that I am going, if I can keep up the pace, I will be ready to apply for the JET program next December. Often times I think about the large amount of money, effort, and time that I am putting into this and I wonder if I am foolish for doing so just on a bet that I may get in to the program. Its very discouraging to think about it so I usually put it out of my mind and think about alternatives if I don't get in. oh well here are some pictures of my study material as well as a look at how some of my hiragana is going. I personally think it has improved and looks much less like a 5 year old's hand writing and more like a 13 year old's hand writing. I am getting better at recognizing the writing but I still have a long way to go be for I stop sounding like a hooked on phonics commercial.