Jul 30

CLAIR-NY’s Hanzawa-san on his life in NYC

JETAA Chapters, Translating/Interpreting, Writers Comments Off on CLAIR-NY’s Hanzawa-san on his life in NYC

For those who don’t know him, Taichi Hanzawa (Miyagi-ken) works for CLAIR-NY (also known as the Japan Local Government Center or JLGC) and this past year served as the JETAA USA Liaison.  That’s the position responsible for coordinating with all 19 JETAA USA chapters to help them with their funding.  Takusan shigoto yo.  Cantan de ha arimasen. Yet Hanzawa-san has worked very hard and served admirably.

Recently, he wrote a short article for the Miyagi Ken Prefectural Newsletter where he reflected on his life in New York.  By way of context, Hanzawa-san and most of his colleagues at CLAIR-NY are part of a sort of inverse version of the JET Program.  They are all local government workers in their city or prefectural governments.  And they’ve all been selected to be part of a three-year program that starts with one year of training in Tokyo followed by a two-year assignment in a CLAIR office in the U.S., UK, Australia or elsewhere.

Below is the article by Hanzawa-san (along with a picture of him at a recent JETAA NY executive meeting held at the JLGC).  If anyone would like to post an English summary in the comments section (assuming you can make out the print below), that would be more than welcome.   (If you’d like a PDF version, e-mail jetwit [at] jetwit [dot] com.)