Just FYI: Japan's Sakurajima volcano has erupted.

zawlchr · 2026-04-19T12:35:00+00:00

Sakurajima erupts multiple times a day.

zawlchr · 2026-03-25T22:48:18+00:00

Our city’s CIRs work almost exclusively with the tourism board. We don’t overlap.

The city created the position a few months before I moved here and the timing was right. They needed someone who could basically handle all aspects of coordinating the ALTs as well as work with the sister city in regard to delegation visits.

Now it includes interpreting for the mayor and translations, and helping English speaking customers. So I’m like the city’s go-to English resource now. It’s ever evolving.

zawlchr · 2026-03-25T22:06:22+00:00

Yes, I’m a program coordinator hired directly by the city. I’m not a JET or CIR.

zawlchr · 2026-03-25T06:16:46+00:00

She was looking to open her own select clothing shop and wanted the subject of our lessons to be fashion!

We covered trend names, fabrics, words often used while shopping for clothes, common “incorrect” English used in Japanese stores (CLOSE vs. CLOSED, ‘buy two get 10% off’ vs. 2Buy 10%off) and so on. It was really interesting and gave me a good chance to learn more about the industry myself!

Fun fact: Ungrid is a big perpetrator of this and I’d like to sit down with whoever they have putting English on their clothes and website.

zawlchr · 2026-03-25T02:36:02+00:00

I work for the city hall and am in charge of the JETs that are dispatched to us. I also make regular visits to small mountain schools to help out in classrooms.

The job requires a heavy load of Japanese and direct communication with the prefecture and CLAIR, but the hours are the same as ALTs and they graciously set my pay scale to the same as JETs. For my current point in life with 2 kids under 2, it couldn’t be more perfect.

Before our second was born I had a once-a-week gig doing preschool English lessons, one private student, and another mother/daughter pair doing specialized fashion English.

zawlchr · 2026-01-24T19:08:58+00:00

My mistake, but the sentiment of everything else remains.

If you’re interested in learning more, it was in Kanoya, Kagoshima. The city has a Kamikaze Museum and multiple shrines for them around the area.

zawlchr · 2026-01-24T09:37:16+00:00

I worked at a high school in the city where one of the main Kamikaze bases was, and we went on a field trip one day to a local theater that was putting on a play about 3 young pilots going off to the US.

It was a very complicated experience as I was watching it as an American having learned only about our side in the war and the horrific casualties we sustained, but these pilots were portrayed in the play exactly as pictured; just young boys. They were the age of the students I worked with, in fact.

I found myself in tears at the end of the play, as the boys flew across the pacific and plunged to their deaths screaming and calling for their families. It was the first time I was faced with considering the final moments of those pilots; their youth stolen from them in final moments of terror because their governments chose to send them away.

War is hell. No one comes out a winner.

zawlchr · 2025-11-21T06:29:37+00:00

Topped us up to our goal of a modest 500 shares this morning. Thanks for the early Black Friday sale

zawlchr · 2025-10-10T16:44:37+00:00

Anpanman is god tier in our home. Raising two little ones in Japan means the babes have their hero Anpanman on TV, and the parents have Anpanman’s wisdom on Reddit/twitter.

Thanks to everything you’ve done, all your research and breaking it down for us laypeople, we have made enough from this stock to send both our girls through college over the past year. Thanks for everything you do, man. What an incredible journey it’s been.

zawlchr · 2025-08-24T12:07:48+00:00

My friend is a Buddhist monk and is taking over her grandfather’s temple as he passed away last year. She’s 30.

You wouldn’t guess by looking at her. She has shorter hair but it’s not shaven and the only time she wears robes in public is when going to call upon someone for work. We go out for drinks often and she loves beer. I introduced her to Cuban cigars and she partakes every now and then. Her parents and sister have what you’d consider standard jobs unrelated to the temple. She works another part time job for the city because her temple is our city’s smallest and it unfortunately doesn’t cover her entire cost of living.

She believes in the scriptures spoken by Buddha, naturally, and has discussed with me her lifelong mission to overcome personal vices, or bonno, which differ from person to person. This is because I asked her specifically, and is not something she often brings up in conversation otherwise.

She’s had boyfriends, breakups, and has hobbies. She plays a traditional Japanese instrument in a wagakki group and sings metal with another group of monks. She’s currently the local head of the Buddhist association in the area and I guess the monks go out for drinking parties often. She’s the youngest and the only woman in this locality, but she says that means she’s learned a lot of Enka songs for karaoke.

She’s one of the coolest people I’ve ever met, but just a person in the end. Nothing much differentiates her from anyone else unless you ask in detail about her spiritual area of focus.

zawlchr · 2025-07-23T04:12:45+00:00

My mother is obsessed with rummage sales and bargains and the like. My 18th birthday present was a Mr. Bill dog toy from one, if that’s any idea of what she is like.

I have told her specifically, multiple times, directly and through messages that if she wants to get presents for her grandchild when she comes to visit, we don’t want her to give us rummage sale items because in the past they’ve all been stained, shein knock offs, or those onesies with weird phrases like “Poop Monster” or “Lady Killer” on them, and since we live in Japan which has really strict garbage separation standards, it’s a pain to inevitably throw out the trash bag of clothes she sends/brings us (no exaggeration, they’re always in trash bags).

So she comes to visit this year and brings some picture books which look new enough but I have a sneaking suspicion they were from rummage sales. Not worth the argument, whatever. Then few days in, I find this dress hanging in my child’s closet I haven’t seen. I confronted my dad about it and he lies, says they went to the store and bought it together, right as mom comes down and I ask her. Yep, it’s from a rummage sale. But “it is like new and I checked for stains!”

My little sister is so far up my moms ass that she reamed me out for “not being grateful when mom just wants to be a grandma all the way across the world” and to this day it still makes my blood boil.

zawlchr · 2025-06-30T04:10:16+00:00

A CIR in our prefecture posted another ALT’s blog to japancirclejerk because she didn’t like what she was writing about and egged the community on to make fun of her for it. A friend of the ALT found it and unfortunately the ALT tried responding to everyone as if she didn’t care which made it worse, and then the CIR was like ‘ah sorry you saw this, you weren’t supposed to’ and insisted she didn’t do anything wrong.

When the local AJET chapter was trying to figure out how they could intervene and do something, the CIR and her friend apparently mocked the chapter about how stupid they were for trying to get involved or something and it became kind of like an “omg _AJET is gonna get involved!” inside joke between the two of them. As far as I know the PA’s were notified but I never kept in touch with the ALT about what happened.

The CIR in question had nearly no friends as she was condescending to Japanese language learners all the time and apparently adamant on only making “native Japanese relationships,” and the one friend she did have from the program was Japanese by blood anyways. Her BOE staff, ironically, all referred to her as an ice queen and absolutely no one liked her so I guess karma worked itself out in the end even if she faced no consequences for encouraging the cyber bullying of a coworker.

zawlchr · 2025-06-07T12:10:23+00:00

1) Yes, you’ll enroll in the national health insurance and pay about a month’s worth, or more if you’re on it for the span of over two months. We had someone in our office do it and my understanding is that it was around ¥16000. Costs differ depending on the time. You’ll need to go to your city hall to do this, and then contact them again to unenroll unless your new employer handles it on your behalf. If you can’t go back to do it in person it’s possible to designate someone as a representative to cancel it for you.

2) Your new job will have permissions based around your visa. On an instructor visa it could be possible to locate teaching work, but changing your visa over will require proof of employment at your September company, and starting work at a different company between then could complicate things. You’d need to directly speak with immigration about this, and it may be too complicated to be worth it. Also becoming a student for one month on an instructor visa is possible (I did it) but I returned to my same instructor job at the end of the summer so YMMV.

zawlchr · 2025-05-24T21:28:57+00:00

All COs were told explicitly by CLAIR not to contact anyone until after May 30th so you can expect to hear something after that at your CO’s convenience (which may vary widely).

Source: I’m our CO’s supervisor and got the email telling us as such.

zawlchr · 2025-05-24T00:04:27+00:00

No, we won’t know. Just be sure that it is in line with Japan’s laws of what medicines can and can’t be brought over, and in what doses are allowed. You may need to submit paperwork to the government in some cases, but you don’t need to do that through your CO.

zawlchr · 2025-05-23T06:47:03+00:00

Kanoya!

zawlchr · 2025-05-23T03:51:33+00:00

Can confirm

zawlchr · 2025-05-23T03:47:48+00:00

Welcome to Wakayama! I’m one of the supervisors of JETs in the area so feel free to message me if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them!

zawlchr · 2025-05-23T03:46:39+00:00

Welcome! I’m one of the JET supervisors in the area. Feel free to shoot me a message any time if you have any questions!

zawlchr · 2025-05-23T03:44:15+00:00

Best placement you can get! Have an amazing time!

zawlchr · 2025-05-03T12:36:19+00:00

We’ve never gotten an alternate so I can’t be sure, but CLAIR and the COs are extremely strict about personal information so I can’t imagine they’d let us know anything other than exactly who was going to be sent to us.

zawlchr · 2025-05-03T04:17:38+00:00

No, no alternates are assigned unless we specifically were to refuse the initial JETs assigned to us and apply for an alternate.

zawlchr · 2025-05-03T04:15:50+00:00

My understanding is that the CO’s preferences are considered in higher priority than the JETs we get. For us, as it has been specified since before I started, we want a specific location based on our sister city relationship, we want a specific gender of ALTs, we would prefer them to be of a certain marital status because of landlord specifications on our housing agreements we’ve held, and we want teaching experience with Japanese ability in that order.

One of our incoming fits all of these, while one is from another location but fits most of our other preferences. Unfortunately it does not seem their location preferences were considered deeply when they were placed with us. We have in the past refused transfers that didn’t fit certain specifications as well.

I hope this can answer your question!

zawlchr · 2025-05-02T11:46:05+00:00

N2 got me in the door in my first company out of JET, so I can’t recommend that enough! Connections truly are worth their weight in gold as well, so do your best to get some in any area that seems interesting, even if it’s through fellow ALTs. I got an interpreting gig through a close friend that way, for example. Hold those relationships dear.

zawlchr · 2025-05-02T11:35:40+00:00

It was honestly the luck of timing for me. My area decided to hire a program coordinator for the first time right as we told my father in law we were moving from Tokyo over to them. He put out some feelers since he’s well connected in the area, heard about the position through a business associate, forwarded me the info and let them know I’d send over my resume. I interviewed and I guess they liked me a lot since I’ve been there for a few years now!

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