Sorry the posts are coming in so slowly, I promise I'll have more to write once I get to Japan.
I got my school posting. I am going to be teaching at Yamasaki Minami Junior High School in Yamasaki-cho, Shiso-shi, Hyogo-ken. I did a little sleuthing (stalking, really) online, and found these pictures from a former JET who worked at the school:
If it is the same place, it looks really nice and I'm totally excited to get there and meet all the kids. Everything I've heard makes me think it's going to be a blast.
One thing has been troubling me, though. For those of you at Wash U, you know how annoying it is when people say "oh, how do you like Seattle?" or some variation of that. Well, I've had a couple people now say "so you're moving to China, right?" Like they heard I was going to Japan, registered "Asia," and then repeat it later as China. Maybe I'm being oversensitive, but it bugs me that the two countries seem interchangeable to some people. I had a guy try to hit on me at a party once by saying "you're going to Japan? Cool, I went there once. Hong Kong is awesome." At the risk of sounding self-important, I guess this is why they created a program like JET in the first place--to help increase awareness of Japanese culture abroad and do away with Western conceptions of "the Asian cultural identity."
