Kiran Sharda

ALT and Prefectural Advisor, Miyazaki Prefecture, 2016-2021

Life on JET is hard to sum up in such a short space and it would be wrong of me to tell what you will or won’t experience. It becomes a bit of cliché but honestly every JET placement is so different and unique that to try to give you an overall picture of what you will experience on the programme is an almost impossible task. 

However, therein lies the fantastic appeal of the JET Programme in my opinion. Whereas a year studying abroad or even a working holiday can be a rich and indeed rewarding experience, what the JET Programme offers is chance to interact with a local Japanese community on a much deeper and more involved level. 

A great example I can give from my wonderful five years spent in Miyazaki Prefecture would be a rainy, very rainy, Saturday afternoon spent standing in a muddy field cheering on my Senior High School’s football team in their first competitive match of the season. Although the match ended in a draw, I have never been more emotionally invested in a match that really didn’t mean much or matter in the grand scheme of things. However, behind all my wild and probably over enthusiastic use of Japanese, was a history of many many hours spent after school at football practice. Being able to get involved with an after school football club, amongst other activities, really was a bridge into becoming more directly involved with my school and local community. 

Now, I am bit strange in that I will happily play football in any temperature or season at any time, so you may be reading this wondering how any of this can apply to you, should you not also be that way inclined. I feel that this personal example highlights just how the JET Programme enables you to be more than just an ALT. Your English lessons are just one part of your experience on the Programme, and while they in themselves will be your daily bread and butter, it is everything that surrounds your lessons that will make your experience truly unique. 

The fact I was placed in what was definitely one of the more obscure and less well known prefectures in Japan, Miyazaki, further highlights the great appeal of the programme and the many unique situations you could find yourself in. JET participants can be placed all over Japan, from the big cities such as Tokyo or Osaka right down to the more rural prefectures such as Kagoshima or best of all Miyazaki (maybe a little bit of personal bias there). I look back on my time spent in Miyazaki and am nothing but grateful for having been placed there. If I had not participated on the JET Programme there was very little chance I would have got to experience some of the wonders of Miyazaki: the great surfing, thrilling mountain hikes, food to rival any Michelin chef and of course, plenty of shochu. Being thrust into the unknown is certainly a daunting experience, and Miyazaki was definitely not on my radar at all before leaving in 2016. Frantic googling also yielded few results or answers, so I decided to just give up on any pre-departure research and just roll with punches once I was there. 

The punches certainly came thick and fast and the first one to hit me like a train was the blistering humidity getting off the plane. “I’ve made a terrible mistake,” I thought to myself immediately and a broken AC in my apartment did little to assure myself that I was cut out for Japanese summer. By the end of my time on JET, five years later, I still stand by this thought, but as with all things on the programme these small challenges and cultural differences pale in comparison to the overwhelming feeling of excitement and wonder you will experience everyday by living and working in a truly unique new environment. Small things consistently amazed me, whether it be having a student in the school corridor out of nowhere scream a newly learnt English word at me in pure excitement to see if they had got it right, to the more practical marvels of purchasing domestic flight tickets in under five minutes from my local seven-eleven convenience store. 

One of the concerns many people, and indeed myself had coming to the programme would be how I would survive, especially in rural Miyazaki, without a native level of Japanese. However these fears were soon subsided when I found that as long as I was willing to put myself out there and meet my local community halfway with as much basic Japanese, and sometimes none at all, as I could manage then I was perfectly able navigate any day to day situations. The warmth and kindness of people who I had never met before was certainly a highlight and prevailing memory that I have of my time on JET. 

JET forces you out of your comfort zone at times, but puts in place numerous support systems for you to lean upon, whether that be official help in the form of your contracting organisation, or enabling you to build strong relationships with the local Japanese and wider JET community. It is these relationships with people who I would have never had the chance to meet had I not been on the programme that make JET truly special in my opinion. Lifelong friendships and relationships with other JET participants and my Japanese friends are things I am eternally grateful for. 

JET is unpredictable, but it is that precise unpredictability that means you will be in for a truly unique experience that will broaden your horizons in ways you would never have thought.