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Leaving on a JET Plane
A record number participate in the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme
Finding that perfect first job can be a challenge. But not for Drew Blanton ’07, a chemistry major from Loyall, Ky. “They’re paying me to hang out in Japan and play games with kids!” he says. “I couldn’t ask for a better job just out of college.”
Blanton is one of five recent graduates—a Centre record—teaching English in Japan this fall as language assistants with the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme. Their reasons for choosing JET are as different as their assignments, but they all relish the challenge and excitement of living in a country 14 time zones from Danville.
Begun in 1987, the JET Programme brings young graduates from more than 40 countries to work in Japan, primarily teaching English and other languages in schools, and to serve as cultural ambassadors to the traditionally insular island nation. It’s prestigious, relatively lucrative, and requires neither teaching experience nor knowledge of Japanese (though a willingness to learn is obviously essential).
One of the biggest challenges for most JETs from Centre is simply being a minority for the first time, according to one JET veteran.
“In a town of 35,000, I am one of only four foreigners,” says Aaron L. Smith ’06, who is starting his second year with JET in the city of Yanai. “Needless to say, I stand out. It is an eye-opening experience to be recognized as a minority.”
Yet the attention also brings advantages—such as being treated as a celebrity. “Everywhere I go people know who I am and try to speak to me in English or Japanese,” he says. “I get invited to participate in festivals and barbecues so much that I have to turn people down.”
Smith’s enthusiasm for the program persuaded his classmate Jay King ’06 to apply. King did not have any particular pull toward Japan before taking a night school class in Japanese last year, he just wanted to work and live abroad. He is assigned to a middle school in Tottori, a city, in the southern part of the country on the Sea of Japan. So far, he says, it seems to be the perfect match.
Maureen McCarthy ’07 likewise had no experience of things Japanese before joining JET. As a French and international studies major, her focus had been on Europe, but she wanted to experience a completely different culture. JET placed her in Katagami, a town about the size of Danville, with many rice fields and a beach near her house. McCarthy has responsibilities at two junior high schools and four elementary schools, and consequently a lot of students.
“They are often a little shy about using their English with me,” she says, but for the most part they are excited to speak with her—and the instruction works both ways.
“I am slowly learning Japanese, but it is very hard,” she admits. “I wish I could communicate better.”
Unlike McCarthy and King, Blanton had studied the language at Centre and had lived in Japan with Centre’s exchange program at Yamaguchi Prefectural University. He is now in Hagi, a medieval castle town, where fellow JET participants include another American (who, coincidently, once considered playing basketball for Centre), a guy from Wales, one from England, three New Zealanders, and an Australian. JET, he says, is “awesome,” as well as a useful prelude to his planned career in teaching.
Other JETs this year are Will Larson ’07, working in Higa, a rural mountainous area northwest of Tokyo, and Tyler Miller ’07, in Hokuto, a city in central Japan, who says that he’s been to a variety of village festivals and helped to organize events for the increasingly popular Western holiday of Halloween.
Smith, the JET veteran in Yanai, offers some insight into what the new language assistants might expect if assigned, as he is, to a high school. “The typical academic high school day begins at 8:30, with classes lasting until 3:30,” he says. “After 3:30 all students and teachers clean the school until about 4. At 4, club activities begin and last until 7, at which time most students go to cram school to study for college entrance examinations. Students wear uniforms, are not allowed to have part-time jobs, and almost all come to school by train or bicycle. In spite of this difficult schedule, students are very similar to their Western counterparts. Yes, they are more quiet, more shy, and tend to wait for a consensus of their peers for almost any decision, but they still joke around with each other, complain when they get too much homework, [and] try to push the limits of their uniform dress code.”
Centre’s unusually successful JET numbers this year even impressed one of the JET program coordinators. “I was very surprised at the number of candidates,” says Jessica Cork, of the Japanese consulate in Atlanta, “first of all given that it is a small college and second of all that the JET Programme is very competitive. That says great things about Centre College!”
A sixth graduate, Anna Cable ’07, was also selected, but declined the honor to accept a Fulbright to Japan, where she is conducting research at the U.S. naval base Sasebo, outside Nagasaki.
Why this surge of interest in Japan? International programs czar Milton Reigelman suggests that the College’s seven-year-old exchange program has had some influence.
“Our residential program at Yamaguchi Prefectural University has undoubtedly brought Japan closer to the U.S. in our students’ imaginations,” he says. Thirty Centre students have spent time at Yamaguchi since the program began in 2000, including five this fall, with about 13 students from Japan at Centre, including three this year.
Reigelman also credits Centre’s culture of foreign study. “As Centre has become more and more international in its perspective,” he says, “more and more of our graduates are thinking of the whole world as their oyster.”
Eighty-two percent of the Class of 2007 studied abroad at least once while at Centre.
The College began offering Japanese in the fall of 1996, when Rick Bradshaw joined the history faculty. Although his professional focus is Africa, Bradshaw grew up in Japan and was willing to teach a few language classes. Four years later, the College began its relationship with Yamaguchi Prefectural University, which not only offered Centre students the chance to live in Japan, but also brought native speakers to Danville who could assist with the language classes. In the fall of 2000, Joannah Peterson ’00 became Centre’s second JET participant, continuing a trend that now extends to 16. [The italicized words have been changed from the print version. After this issue came out, the Centrepiece learned that Tonia Hale ’98 was Centre's first known JET participant. She spent 1998-99 in the prefecture of Aichi, a year she calls "one of the best experiences" of her life. She was, she says, "a small-town girl from Eastern Kentucky" who has now traveled to 30 countries and lived in Washington, D.C., Boston, and, currently, Seattle, where she works for the FBI.]
Peterson spent two years (JET assignments last one to five years) at a high school in Sendai, a large city in northeast Japan. A psychology major at Centre, she switched fields after JET, and is now finishing a master’s in Japanese literature and teaching second-year Japanese at Indiana University.
Her initial interest in the language was prompted by Japanese exchange students at Centre. “I wanted to be able to understand them when they talked in Japanese to one another,” she recalls. A winter-term trip to Japan as a senior convinced her that she had to return. Today she still treasures the friends she made in Sendai: her host family, her tea ceremony and ikebana (flower arranging) teachers, and others.
“They continue to be a part of my extended family,” she says. “As a result, my views [have become] more global, and the world itself a more exciting place to be.”
Another pioneer, JayVe Montgomery ’01, was the first from Centre to take part in both the exchange program and JET. Now an artist/musician and the program facilitator for the Chicago Parks District’s Inferno Mobile Recording Studio (a youth program), he began studying Japanese as a sophomore. He “took to the graphic symbolism present in the written language,” he says, and continues to explore kanji (Japanese writing) in his art. When the exchange program began his senior year, he was quick to sign up. JET was the “most lucrative and culturally enriching” way to return to Japan after graduation, he says, and he particularly appreciated being able to immerse himself in Japanese culture in Toyoura, his Japanese town.
“In JET you work on the school schedule, with the opportunities to involve yourself in band practice, soccer practice, and the lives of your students and fellow teachers,” he says. His activities included holding English language activities for the town’s children—and serving as police chief for a day to mark Traffic Safety Month. “You should have seen the surprise in the motorists’ eyes as I approached their vehicles to hand them fruit and say ‘Ki o tsukete ne,’ be careful,” he recalls.Everyone from Centre who has participated in JET seems to have found the experience transformational. For many, their love affair with Japan began with the Yamaguchi exchange program, but perhaps none more so than Aaron Smith, in Yanai. He met his wife, Kyoko Yorishige, when she was an exchange student at Centre.
“I guess our marriage is proof of the success of this program!” he says.
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Sixteen Centre graduates have participated in the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme. They are listed below with the city to which they were assigned. The cities (except for Fusou) appear on the cover image.
Tonia Hale ’98: Fusou
Joannah Peterson ’00: Sendai
David Gower ’01: Iburihashi
JayVe Montgomery ’01: Toyoura
Andrew Rafferty ’02: Kanazawa
Dana Settles ’02: Daito
Katie Fegley Booth ’03: Osaka
Jennifer Cheatham Foster ’04: Nagato
Ginny Davis ’05: Shuho
David Newbold ’06: Hofu
Aaron L. Smith ’06: Yanai
Jay King ’06: Tottori
Drew Blanton ’07: Hagi
Will Larson ’07: Higa
Maureen McCarthy ’07: Katagami
Tyler Miller ’07: Hokuto
To read about other recent grads teaching English abroad, click here.
—D.F.J.
Centrepiece
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