I don’t know whether I am a good advert for JET or a bad one!
I came to Japan on the JET programme in 1991, met my future husband here in the first week (though I don’t remember that) and ended up staying here. I now own my own English school and I get a lot out of it.
As for JET - it depends what you want to put in to the job and where you are placed to a large extent. I was put in a central Board of Education office and sent to a different one of over 30 high schools every day. It was soul destroying doing self introductions day in, day out, and being ignored in the teacher’s rooms. My friends placed in either a small town or a base school did very much better socially and also for learning Japanese.
I did do long stints (like four weeks at a time) in the local blind, deaf and handicapped schools for some reason, and I made very good friends there, one of whom married my husband’s best friend, and who we are still close to even today. I also went one day a week to a school miles away from my office, but also there I made good friends which lasted a long time.
I enjoyed the challenge of getting myself around the district but I didn’t like a lot of the petty rules and the sexism (my second supervisor, one second after he met me said, " I wouldn’t let MY daughter go and work so far away." That set the tone for the rest of our time together.)
I LOVED LOVED LOVED the social life! Though as I was 25 when I arrived in Japan and had already had a couple of years in the workforce I was shocked at the slacker attitudes of a huge number of JETs. The fact that there are so many JETs means that you can always find a circle that suits you, no matter what your interests. There were some jerks but there were some seriously interesting people, too. As my Japanese circle of friends expanded (this is hard at first, if you have a sport or an interest that you can continue here it helps immeasurably) then so my life got richer.
And in terms of the teaching of English itself - I hated the way it was done in high school but saw odd incidences of truly inspired and dedicated teachers who really, really loved the language and wanted to communicate that to their students (these people were vastly outnumbered by teachers just doing their jobs, but that’s the same all over the world). I also hated being put on display all the time, but my friends who had base schools said this wore off for them and they were able to make inroads through other avenues such as sports or clubs as well as in English lessons. One friend I had set up an embroidery club - sounds dull and odd but the stuff those kids came up with (huge, dramatic murals) won prizes and got them on the TV.
The pay has not changed in the approximately 20 years that the programme is running - that is Y300,000 per month before deductions (some of which you will get back if you leave the country at the end of your contract.) After deductions including my apartment rent, I had about Y240,000 a month to live on, which was fine then, and still OK now but not a fortune. If you lived in the country and didn’t go mad you could save Y100,000 a month after the first few months of getting set up here.
I learned enough about the teaching of English to realise that I wanted to do this as a career but I wanted to do it properly, in a carefully thought out manner and under my own steam. Fifteen years, one marriage, two children and six house moves later, that it what I have achieved.
The marriage, kids, house and lifestyle are good too, and I wouldn’t change a thing.
One thing I would caution you against is that if you end up staying the three years, you might find yourself in a similar position to where I was at that point. I realised that if I went back to England I would miss Japan desperately, and it would leave a huge hole in my life. But I realised that the same could be said for my staying here. Both this country and your home country could get a grip on you and leave you torn between love for the two for the rest of your life.
On a final prosaic note, why not apply and make the decision later? So many people apply and only a few actually get on the programme, and the whole thing takes months. And if you do get on the programme and are then wavering about whether to actually go or not, then what persuaded me to jump in and do it was my friend saying “Go. Even if you hate it, you can’t possibly be miserable for 365 days straight, there’ll bound to be some good bits, and it’s only for a year.” So I went. 15 years ago. And never… came…baaaaaack!
