Nov 14

JETAA Chapter Beat 14th of November 2014

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Welcome to JETAA Chapter Beat. Ashlie O’Neill (Hyogo 2013-present) puts a spotlight on JET alumni associations across the globe. O’Neill is a current JET as well as the current the Association for Japan Exchange and Teaching (AJET) Director of Alumni Relations and Block 6 Representative (Hyogo, Kyoto and Shiga)for the AJET National Council. She can be contacted at her email or on LinkedIn.

This month in the JETAA Chapter Beat networking and career advancement take the spotlight.

Heartland JETAA and Rocky Mountains JETAA

Career Advancement Seminar
14th November 2014
Plaza Library, near 4763 Main St, Kansas City, Missouri 64112

“During the JETAA USA National Conference RMJETAA expressed an interest in a joint event with HJETAA and this seminar, connected via internet, is our first foray into event sharing. Come join us for this historic occasion.

Whether you’re recently returned or looking for a better job, our speaker will give you information you can use.”

Pacific Northwest JETAA

Welcome Back Nomikai
November 14th 2014 (7-9pm)
Kushibar, 2319 2nd Ave, Seattle

“The November Nomikai is welcoming back new returnees from Japan, new people in the Pacific Northwest area, and of course, all the ‘old’ alumni who are seriously awesome.

Come out and join us for food, drinks, and everything cool! We’ve got a bigger crop of returnees this year, and hopefully, we’ll see some of them out and about with us on Friday!”

Southern California(and Arizona) JETAA

JLPT Study Session
4-5:30pm, 16th November 2014
85C Bakery Café, 1735 W Carson St, Torrance, California 90501

“JETAASC wanted to invite everyone to our second and final JLPT study session. Why don’t we make it a Nihongo Dake Day?

Please RSVP through the following link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZpnghsYTQeiX6gMss8IythvI1F7TwhN53JI13RKxOnI/edit?usp=sharing”

JETAA Toronto

JETAA Toronto Career Roundtable and Networking Event
6:30pm 20th November 2014
Wattpad HQ 36 Wellington Street East, Toronto, Ontario M5E

“The JETAA Career Roundtable is the central professional networking event of the fall calendar for JET Programme alumni. The goal of the event is to give newly-minted JET alumni the opportunity to meet with Toronto professionals from a number of fields, including other alumni who have gone on to great success in their fields.

We will be sharing more information about the industries that will be represented at the event on the JETAA Facebook group and website. This year’s roundtable will be hosted in the wonderful Wattpad Innovation Space on the 3rd floor of 36 Wellington Street East in downtown Toronto. Join us on Thursday November 20th at 6:30pm.

Please RSVP at http://guestli.st/295734

Event is free! Check out our website (http://www.jetaatoronto.ca/) for other information and to keep posted as we begin to post bios of some of our professionals”.

JETAA Tokyo

Drinks with JETAA Tokyo
8pm 19th November 2014
HUB Shibuya / 東京都渋谷区宇田川町3-10 ぽあんしぶや安保ビル　Ｂ１Ｆ

“JETAA Tokyo would like to invite all members to join us for drinks at the HUB Shibuya on November 19th. This will be a very informal gathering starting from 8pm to promote networking with former and current JETs in the Tokyo area.”

Nov 11

Let’s Talk Japan, Episode 26 – DISCO International Bilingual Recruiting

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Let’s Talk Japan is a monthly, interview format podcast covering a wide range of Japan-related topics. Host Nick Harling (Mie-ken, 2001-03) lived in Japan from 2001 until 2005, including two great years as a JET Program participant in Mie-Ken. He practices law in Washington, D.C., and lives with his wife who patiently listens to him talk about Japan . . . a lot.

In this episode, Nick speaks with JET Program alumni Catherine Rackley (Chiba-ken 2005-06) of DISCO International, a human resources firm specializing in Japanese-English bilingual recruitment. Whether you’re currently job searching or just curious about bilingual employment possibilities, this episode is full of useful information.

If you have not already done so, be sure to follow the podcast on Twitter @letstalkjapan and leave a positive rating/review in iTunes.

Nov 4

Life After JET: Of Legal Discourse and Family Ties

LifeAfterJET, Uncategorized careers, jetaansw, Life After JET

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Re-published after its first appearance from the JETAA NSW site: Our next Life After JET alumni is Shino Hamada (CIR Fukuoka-shi 2006-2011), a legal practitioner for a Sydney-based subsidiary for a major Japanese trading firm, whose life experiences show that you should always grab opportunities as they come by.

There is a tiny coastal town in the Southern part of Nagasaki Prefecture called Kazusa-machi. Besides a few holiday makers who visit its somewhat white sandy beaches in the summer, Kazusa-machi is usually a town which people merely drive through on their way from Nagasaki City to Shimabara City or vice versa. I was born there and spent the first eight years of my life running around on the beach behind our house with my three older siblings and speaking in the thickest Nagasaki dialect, until my hippie parents decided to uproot the whole family to live in New Zealand.

We continued to speak Japanese at home in West Auckland for four years, until my parents divorced and mum left us and returned to Japan. In order for us to overcome this incident, my dad forbade us to speak Japanese to each other and ordered us to discard everything that was Japanese, including our beloved Doraemon comic books and anything that reminded us of mum. My dad often spoke of his negative feelings towards Japan which rubbed off on me to the extent that I refused to speak Japanese at all for the next six years.

Still, Japan was always in the back of my mind and I was always a tiny bit curious about it. I also had not seen mum since she left us, so when I finished high school, I decided that I might as well go live with her in Nagasaki for a year. I arrived in Japan with a very low expectation and an extremely rusty tongue for the language, but what I found there was something beautiful, what I can only describe as ‘comfortable’ and I quickly fell in love with the culture and the people. I worked at a local supermarket fulltime and also taught English to primary school children in the evenings and weekends and loved every minute of it. At the supermarket, there would be regular customers who would always come and happily chat with me about their grandchildren or their pet dog and give me pumpkins from their garden. At the English school, the kids were always happy to see me and eager to learn.

Once the year was over, I returned to New Zealand to start university and decided to study Linguistics and Language Teaching. In my second year, a friend suggested that a Bachelor Arts would merely make me employable at McDonalds, which I gullibly believed and decided that I would study law to complement my Bachelor of Arts. In my last year, I decided to apply for the JET Programme as a CIR so that I could spend a couple of years living near mum and gain some experience working in a Japanese office. I did not really intend on becoming a lawyer after I graduated, but since I had eight months between the end of university and my departure for Japan on the JET Programme, I thought I might as well complete my professional legal studies course and I became admitted as a lawyer in New Zealand a couple of month before I left for Fukuoka.

In Fukuoka, I worked for the International Affairs Department in the city hall along with two CIR’s from non-English speaking countries. At first, people were curious about my background but they soon accepted that I was just a New Zealander who happens to look Japanese and speaks Japanese with an odd mix of a Nagasaki – New Zealand accent. My duties included translating and proofreading documents, interpreting for visitors from abroad, acting as a liaison between Fukuoka and a few of our sister cities, conducting monthly lectures for volunteer interpreters, judging speech contests, and conducting job interviews in English. I loved my job and I loved Fukuoka even more, to the extent that my initial intention to stay a maximum of two years was quickly disregarded and I ended up staying the JET maximum of five years.

At the returners’ conference in Tokyo in my fifth year, I still had not yet decided what I wanted to do or where I wanted to be after Fukuoka. I had vaguely toyed with the idea of combining my Japanese language skills with law in Japan previously, but when I spoke with a recruiter in my fourth year on JET, he advised that there are no opportunities for an inexperienced lawyer in Tokyo and that I should return to New Zealand and practice law for at least a couple of years before exploring the legal market in Tokyo. Nevertheless, by chance, I met a legal recruiter at the returners’ conference career fair, who heard of my law qualifications and my experience in a Japanese office and arranged an interview for the next day with the Tokyo office of a British law firm who was looking for a bilingual paralegal. I thought it would be a good practice job interview and thought I might as well try it. I went to an internet café that night and abruptly typed up my CV both in English and Japanese and I was lucky enough to be hired as a paralegal with a possibility of being promoted to a lawyer down the line.

I moved to Tokyo a couple of weeks after I bid farewell to my sweet home for five years and to my coworkers at the city hall who had become my beloved extended family. Once in Tokyo, I worked the hardest I had ever worked in my life, logged in long hours and hardly refused any work that came my way. The five year gap between my law degree and this job was somewhat filled by my experience working in a Japanese office and my understanding of the Japanese business culture which I shared with the foreign lawyers in the office. An Australian partner at my firm liked my work, took me under his wing and I had the privilege to be one of the core team members for a major acquisition of a multinational coal joint venture. It was a laborious few months and at times it felt as though I hardly slept, but the sense of satisfaction I felt once it was over was well worth it. I decided then that I quite liked law, continued to work hard and I was made an associate lawyer a year after I joined the firm.

However, after a year as an associate lawyer, I started to become restless in Tokyo. I had been in Japan for seven years at that point and was ready for something new. I also felt that I had been immersed in the Japanese culture for a bit too long and even starting to forget some English words. Luckily, the Australian partner who pushed me to become a lawyer had returned to Sydney and was keen for me to join him in Sydney and had an interesting secondment opportunity at the Australian subsidiary of a major Japanese trading house.

I joined the Sydney office a year ago, and have ever since been seconded to the infrastructure team of the Japanese trading house where I like to think I am maximising my Japanese language skills, understanding of Japanese business culture and my legal knowledge. I assist the company on its investments in infrastructure public-private partnerships in Australia from the pre-bid consortium discussion stage through to the actual bid or financial close, as well as identifying and analysing new opportunities for our counterparts in the Tokyo head office.

I do not think anyone is ever sure if the path they have taken is the right one, but if I had not had an open, ‘might as well’ attitude towards learning more about Japan after high school, studying law, obtaining my legal qualifications, staying five years in Fukuoka immersing myself in the Japanese office culture, taking the opportunity to interview at the Tokyo office of my law firm and taking the secondment opportunity in Sydney, I would never have experienced all the things I was able to experience, been able to come to terms with my bicultural upbringing or found a way to combine all my skills.

If you are a returning JET and you do not yet know what you want to do or where you want to be and an opportunity which slightly piques your interest pops up your way, why not shrug your shoulders and think ‘might as well’? It might take you down a route you had never dreamt of, but which may end up being one of the right paths for you.

Oct 23

Getting Unstuck: How to Take Control of Your Schedule and Stop Hijacking Your Own Agenda

Advice, Uncategorized, Writers Agenda, email, Getting Unstuck, priorities, schedule, Taking Control of Your Schedule

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Jonathan Bissell (Chiba-ken, 1995-2000) is the author of Dream in Color, Think in Black & White: How to Get Unstuck and Fulfill Your Dreams and CEO of High Performance Impact, LLC, an executive coaching firm helping proven and emerging leaders to identify and consistently leverage patterns of high performance. He blogs at www.jonathanbissell.com.

Staying in control of your schedule isn’t easy – especially when you’re stressed out, pressed for time, or dealing with multiple deadlines and the demands of others.

But let’s face it: Sometimes the saboteur is you.

If you’ve ever created a great agenda for your day but found yourself doing something completely unrelated when you actually sat down to work, then you know exactly what I mean.

Having your agenda hijacked by someone else is bad enough, but when you’re the main culprit, the loss of control is even more demoralizing. But rather than play the blame game (haven’t you had enough of that?), let’s focus on solutions to the problem.

Here are 3 quick tips you can immediately put into practice to regain control of your schedule and stop hijacking your own agenda.

Schedule Your Shadow Priorities. Shadow priorities are the things that you actually do even when you plan to do something else. These priorities are not listed on your agenda, but they exert a powerful influence on how you spend your time. So give them the attention they seek by including them on your agenda, but set clear boundaries around how much time you allot to them. For example, if your plan is to rethink your strategic objectives but you find yourself checking email instead, then incorporate email as a priority on your agenda and schedule specific time blocks to attend to it. You’ll find that scheduling your shadow priorities gives them the attention they crave – and the boundaries they lack.

Oct 13

WIT Life #278: High Speed Rail Plan (via the Onion)

Translating/Interpreting, Uncategorized, WIT Life, Writers

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WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with her own observations.

Apropos of nothing, can’t resist sharing this gem from the Onion. I love how they use the actual train names/types. 良い３連休を！

Oct 10

WIT Life #277: Garden of Unearthly Delights

Art, Translating/Interpreting, Uncategorized, WIT Life, Writers

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As a member of Japan Society, last night I had the chance to preview the new gallery exhibition Garden of Unearthly Delights. It featured works from two artists and the collaboration teamLab that were largely fantastical with a strong dose of social commentary. As a result, it felt like a very dense exhibit that seemed to occupy more space than the gallery’s actual square footage.

Garden begins with works from Manabu Ikeda, an artist originally from Saga Prefecture who now resides in Madison, Wisconsin after previously living in Vancouver. The focus of his paintings in this show are on disaster art and 311, an event he witnessed from outside the country. You can see many manga and anime-like aspects in them as well. I particularly liked his work Foretoken, which is often compared to Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, displayed nearby in the gallery. Upon close inspection you can see the intricate detail of his infinite brushstrokes, but when you look at it from a distance you get a whole other perspective. Underneath the huge wave that is cresting you can find things like Read More

Oct 7

Getting Unstuck: How To Turn Your Dreaming Into Doing

Advice, Books, Uncategorized

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Jonathan Bissell (Chiba-ken, 1995-2000) is the author of Dream in Color, Think in Black & White: How to Get Unstuck and Fulfill Your Dreams. He is also the CEO of High Performance Impact, LLC, an executive coaching firm helping proven and emerging leaders to identify and consistently leverage patterns of high performance.

You’re a writer and you have a book inside you, but it doesn’t know how to get out.

Here are 3 simple steps to begin getting your book out of your head and where it belongs, on paper.

3 Simple Steps To Begin Writing Your Book:

STEP #1: Write Your Introduction. Writing begins with…writing. It sounds silly, but just sitting down to write is the one simple step that many people never take. So take it. Grab a paper and pen, or your laptop, and sit somewhere comfortable. Now imagine we’re sitting there together, and I ask you to tell me about your book. “What’s your book about?” I ask you. Now write or type your answer. That’s it. Just tell me about your book. If it’s helpful, try to answer questions such as Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. Once you’re finished, you’ll have created the Introduction to your book! Now on to step #2.

Continue reading here.

Oct 5

Job: Global Education Advisor (Middle East & Africa), Georgetown University

Jobs, Uncategorized

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Posted by Sean Pavlik (Fukui-ken, 2010-12), International Programs Officer for the DC-based Congressional Study Group on Japan. Click here to join the JETwit Jobs Google Group and receive job listings even sooner by email.

The Office of Global Education at Georgetown University in Washington, DC is currently seeking applications for the position of Global Education Advisor.

Position Summary:
The Global Education Advisor (GEA) advises 90-120 students on academically appropriate study abroad opportunities for a portfolio of programs in the Middle East and Africa (non-French-speaking). The GEA assists students with the application and selection process and acts as the primary liaison with exchange and partner institutions in his/her designated region regarding student support and service. The GEA serves as a resource for curricular deans regarding academic questions for universities within his/her region. The GEA maintains responsibility for program management and fiscal oversight of programs in his/her region. The GEA organizes recruitment and cross-cultural programming for overseas programs, communicates with overseas contacts and partner institutions, and resolves curricular issues in cooperation with students and their curricular deans. The GEA coordinates all OGE marketing and outreach, manages the awarding of all OGE scholarship funds for semester study abroad students, and coordinates student diversity and inclusion programming initiatives for OGE with the intention of diversifying GU’s education abroad population.
Read More

Oct 3

AJET Alumni Survey-Open until October 13th

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Did you know that the Association for Japan Exchange and Teaching (AJET) produces several surveys a year?

Two or three times a year we create a survey incorporating issues that the JET community is currently facing.　We take data that we receive from those who complete these surveys and create reports. These reports are presented to officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC); the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA); the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT); and the Council of Local Authorities for International Relations (CLAIR) to discuss the results these surveys and their implications. An example of what the surveys have achieved so far includes the ban of smoking in staff rooms and the increase in possible JET tenure from three years to five years.

This year we have created an additional survey for Alumni .The more Alumni that answer the survey the better we can represent you to the ministries.

The current survey has been created to gather information from current JETs and Alumni about what they do/have done for Japan, it’s economy, and tourism industry.

Please find the link for the current survey here (which is open until October 13th) . If you are interested in looking at some of our past surveys click here .

For any further questions please feel free to email me.

Ashlie O’Neill
Director of Alumni Relations
AJET National Council 2014-2015
http://www.ajet.net

Sep 22

JETwit Job Hunter Profile: Vanessa Yee

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JETwit Job Hunter is a feature started by Autumn Widdoes (Okinawa-ken 2010-14) where we share the profile of a JET or JET alum currently seeking work and invite JETwit readers to share any advice, suggestions, or perspectives. Autumn is a writer with a focus on performance and film who is actively on the job market. She’d like to put her four years of experience in Japan to good use in future employment.

Job Hunter: Vanessa Yee (Nagano-ken, 2010-14) just completed her JET tenure, having taught two years as an ALT in Shiojiri City and two years as a Prefectural Advisor in Nagano City. She is currently living in Los Angeles, where she is pursuing her MBA part-time at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

Objective: Vanessa is seeking a full-time position in the HR field as either an HR Generalist or HR Specialist in talent development and training or organizational management. On the JET program, she was a Prefectural Advisor and has leadership skills and experience in program management, event organization, administrative and personal counseling, workshop presentations, as well as training and hiring.

Areas of Interest:

Human Resources
Talent development and training
Organizational management
Entry level positions

Job Hunting Strategies:

Undergraduate and graduate school career services offices
Personal contacts in the Los Angeles area
LinkedIn
Japanese recruitment agencies such as PASONA, QuickUSA, and Teruko Weinberg, among others

Challenges: Vanessa is in the process of a career change. While she does not yet have direct experience within the HR field, she has prior work experience that has given her transferable skills aligned with her target industry. While looking for jobs via search engines and websites, she is finding it difficult to determine the level and class of job she wants that will not only match her interests but also her qualifications.

She has also been in contact with Japanese recruiting agencies. She began reaching out to them in May in preparation for her move home, but they required her to wait until August to begin actively searching for her. They did offer to set up Skype interviews for her while she was still located in Japan.

She has also actively reached out to her personal contacts who have helped her secure informational interviews, sent hiring notices to her, and have been very supportive of her job search.

Vanessa would like to continue conducting informational interviews and is seeking contacts with people who have careers in Human Resources. She is also looking for HR related job listings located in the LA/SoCal area. She is determined to find the right job for her and is seeking any leads that will help her reach her goal.

Web Presence:

To contact Vanessa visit her LinkedIn.

To help this JETwit Job Hunter, post your comments below, or contact Vanessa Yee directly.

If you’d like to be profiled, click here to submit your information through the JETwit Job Hunter Google Form.

Reminder that there are a number of JET Alum professionally oriented LinkedIn groups set up to help you. By joining groups in fields that interest you, you can find and connect with other alums in that field.

Sep 15

Job: Manager of Graphic Design and Production – Japan Society (NYC)

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Posted by Jayme Tsutsuse (Kyoto-fu, 2013-2014), organizer of Cross-Cultural Kansai. Click here to join the JETwit Jobs Google Group and receive job listings even sooner by email.

Position: Manager of Graphic Design and Production
Posted by: Japan Society
Location: New York, NY
Type: Full-time

Overview:

The Manager of Graphic Design and Production is responsible for designing and producing all printed materials for Japan Society departments and consulting on all other projects involving the Society’s visual presence (including online) to reinforce and preserve the integrity of the graphic identity of the institution. Read More

Sep 14

WIT Life #275: DC’s Daikaya

Food & Drink, Translating/Interpreting, Uncategorized, WIT Life, Writers

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Thanks to a State Department interpreting assignment starting this past week, I was able to spend some quality time in DC. At the top of the list of restaurants I wanted to try was Daikaya, a ramen shop/izakaya located in Chinatown. It opened last year but I never had a chance to visit, so a friend and I decided to make that our Friday night dinner destination. We had reservations at the osshare second floor izakaya so didn’t get to try the ramen on the first floor, but people were lined up out the door waiting to try the Hokkaido-style salt broth creations.

The offerings on Daikaya’s second floor go beyond classic izakaya fare and are truly inventive. Some Read More

Sep 5

Recent Updates from Andy Anderson

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The Taylor Anderson Memorial Fund Continues to Contribute to Ishinomaki

Here’s a quick update from Andy Anderson on the TAMF’s activities, made possible in part by the generous donations of the JET alumni:

“The Taylor Anderson Memorial Fund had its second board meeting in Tokyo in early July and approved four new reading initiatives in Ishinomaki including a book club and reading groups for local volunteers. We also committed to “Hope for Tomorrow” to support twenty Ishinomaki students who need help to obtain college admission. I met with the Tokyo YMCA to plan the return exchange of seven 2012 Richmond host family students to stay with Ishinomaki host families. We are very grateful to the Tokyo YMCA for planning and paying for the Japan itinerary and ANA for discounted airline tickets! The exchange was very successful and you can see posts on our Facebook page about the trip. I also visited Ishinomaki High School to view the new Taylor Bunko with 541 new books and meet with faculty and former students of Taylor’s. We met with Ishinomaki Senshu University (ISU) to plan for a new Taylor Bunko there. The University is located close to temporary housing and the library is open to all in Ishinomaki. We have begun to plan a unique research exchange program with ISU and Taylor’s alma mater, Randolph-Macon College. We worked with Project Yui and Team Watahoi to bring a Sports Onigokko Tag (www.onigokko.or.jp) day to Watanoha Elementary School on August 19th. We appreciate all of your support and are very grateful to Global Giving for offering to double donations this week! Please continue to check our Facebook page for updates!”

2014 JET Memorial Invitation Program

Andy also let us know about the initial batch of essays that have been posted from the 2014 JET Memorial Invitation Program, which you can access on the Japan Foundation website at http://jflalc.org/pub-breeze83.html. More essays are posted every month, so remember to check regularly. You’ll need to scroll down the page a ways to find the links, but they’re well worth the search.

Sep 3

JETwit Job Hunter Profile: Jonathan Parsons

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JETwit Job Hunter is a feature started by Autumn Widdoes (Okinawa-ken 2010-14) where we share the profile of a JET or JET alum currently seeking work and invite JETwit readers to share any advice, suggestions, or perspectives. Autumn is a writer with a focus on performance and film who is actively on the job market. She’d like to put her four years of experience in Japan to good use in future employment.

Job Hunter: Jonathan Parsons (Akita-ken, 2011-14) is a JET alum who just completed three years teaching in Odate, Akita Prefecture. He is originally from Kentucky but is currently relocating to the West Coast and is seeking job hunting advice for the California, Oregon, and Washington areas.

Objective: Jonathan is seeking a position in international exchange within higher education, a non-profit organization, or within government. Because he has experience as a freelance writer for games, he is also interested in pursuing positions in writing and narrative design/community management in the gaming industry.

Areas of Interest:

Higher education
Non-profit and government
International exchange
Writing for publications
Narrative design
Community Management

Job Hunting Strategies:

Applications to positions in international education at universities.
Applications to game companies.

Challenges: Jonathan and his wife are currently living in Kentucky, so he is facing the challenge of searching for jobs on the West Coast while living far from his target region. He feels that “many schools and companies overlook applicants who do not reside nearby or within the state.” In addition to this challenge, he is seeking advice on how to market himself in the US without any major work experience prior to his JET tenure.

He has done extensive research on various cities and industries located on the West Coast, and would like to reach out to fellow JET alumni located in California, Oregon, and Washington for advice on job hunting and leads in the above industries.

Web Presence:

Resume
Portfolio
Website
To contact Jonathan visit his LinkedIn Profile.

To help this JETwit Job Hunter, post your comments below, or contact Jonathan Parsons directly.

If you’d like to be profiled, click here to submit your information through the JETwit Job Hunter Google Form.

Sep 1

WIT Life #273: Cleveland’s Japanese culture

Food & Drink, Translating/Interpreting, Uncategorized, WIT Life, Writers

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I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I’ve last written here and that we are already welcoming the new school year. I spent a large portion of my summer interpreting for clients on a project in Cleveland, Ohio. I didn’t have high hopes for Japanese connections in this small city, but was determined to find them where they existed. Due to being busy with my job and returning home on weekends, I wasn’t able to explore much outside of the downtown area, but that was enough to find some Japanese influences.

First was the restaurant Noodlecat, said to be “inspired by Tokyo noodle worship and New York City noodle houses.” There is a restaurant downtown as well an outpost at the West Side Market in Ohio City, but I opted for the former to get the full experience. I got the Smoked Tomato Coconut Curry Udon with poached tofu, kohlrabi, potato, scallion and coconut curry kombu broth, as it sounded like a really unique combination of ingredients. Unfortunately, both the udon and its companions were disappointing. The noodles had a strange chewiness and even the texture of the tofu was off. Sure enough, when I told my clients that I was surprised the quality of the food had been so poor, they all agreed and said they had Read More

JETwit.com

JETAA Chapter Beat 14th of November 2014

Let’s Talk Japan, Episode 26 – DISCO International Bilingual Recruiting

Life After JET: Of Legal Discourse and Family Ties

Getting Unstuck: How to Take Control of Your Schedule and Stop Hijacking Your Own Agenda

WIT Life #278: High Speed Rail Plan (via the Onion)

WIT Life #277: Garden of Unearthly Delights

Getting Unstuck: How To Turn Your Dreaming Into Doing

You’re a writer and you have a book inside you, but it doesn’t know how to get out.

Job: Global Education Advisor (Middle East & Africa), Georgetown University

AJET Alumni Survey-Open until October 13th

JETwit Job Hunter Profile: Vanessa Yee

Job: Manager of Graphic Design and Production – Japan Society (NYC)

WIT Life #275: DC’s Daikaya

Recent Updates from Andy Anderson

JETwit Job Hunter Profile: Jonathan Parsons

WIT Life #273: Cleveland’s Japanese culture

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