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
【RocketNews24】New tax exemption system for foreign visitors to Japan starts today!
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Posted by Michelle Lynn Dinh (Shimane-ken, Chibu-mura, 2010–13), editor and writer for RocketNews24. The following article was written by Jessica, a writer and translator for RocketNews24, a Japan-based site dedicated to bringing fun and quirky news from Asia to English speaking audiences.
If you are a regular RocketNews24 reader, you may already know that there have been a lot of changes to Japan’s consumption tax system this year. For those of us who live here, it’s meant an annoying price hike for nearly everything, but for visitors, there is some good news.
Starting today, October 1, new rules regarding consumption tax exemptions for foreign visitors go into effect, and for once, these are actually changes that work in your favor. More details after the jump.
Justin’s Japan: Nippon in New York — Studio Ghibli, New York Comic Con, X Japan, Hatsune Miku
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Catch the New York premiere of Studio Ghibli’s “The Tale of Princess Kaguya” at IFC Center Oct. 3. (GKIDS)
By JQ magazine editor Justin Tedaldi (CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02) for Examiner.com. Visit his Japanese culture page here for related stories.
The Japan-centric events of the month ahead promise to be as rich and full as autumn itself—brisk and colorful, with a dash of unpredictability.
This month’s highlights include:
Friday, October 3, 6:30 p.m.
IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas
$14
New York premiere! Legendary Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies, Pom Poko) revisits an ancient Japanese folktale in this gorgeous, hand- drawn masterwork decades in the making. Found inside a shining stalk of bamboo by an old bamboo cutter (James Caan) and his wife (Mary Steenburgen), a tiny girl grows into an exquisite young lady (Chloë Grace Moretz). The beautiful princess enthralls all who encounter her—but ultimately she must confront her fate. The film will have a “sneak preview” screening in Japanese at IFC Center on Thursday, Oct. 16 prior to its regular run Oct. 17. Click here for additional showtimes.
Sunday, Oct. 5, 4:00 p.m.
Best Buy Theater, 1515 Broadway
$42
The 10-member Morning Musume ’14, also known as Momusu, are one of the most successful Japanese all-girl idol groups, produced by the famous rock writer-producer Tsunku. Their music style is poppy and upbeat, matched only by their elaborately choreographed dance performances. Their story began in 1997 after a TV audition and they made their major debut in 1998.The following year, their single “Love Machine” was their first to sell over one million units. Morning Musume ’14 have already performed in China, Taiwan, South Korea, France and the USA (Los Angeles), and are poised to make their New York stage debut.
Sunday, Oct. 5, 7:00 p.m.
Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway
$40/$30 members, students and seniors/$22 children
Experience the thunderous rhyhms of the ancestral Japanese taiko drums and the magical sounds of the bamboo flutes, as Taikoza returns with richly authentic performances and colorful Japanese dances. The international touring taiko group, led by Swiss-born director Marco Lienhard, will present new compositions as well as traditional pieces in this unique concert featuring special guest from Japan Ichiro Jishoya, who was recently featured in the documentary film Drum Out the Drum of Happiness – Inclusion. This concert will celebrate the 150 anniversary of the diplomatic relationship between Switzerland and Japan.
For the complete story, click here.
Yvonne Thurman-Dogruer (Kagoshima-ken, 1994-95) is a former JETAANY President and Treasurer. She has a Master of International Affairs degree from Columbia University, had a ten-year career at its Center on Japanese Economy and Business, and ran her own business for a number of years. Yvonne currently consults for small businesses and start-ups while continuing the full-time job-search.
I haven’t read Spencer Johnson’s best-selling book, but I love the title. It seems “Who Moved My Cheese” advises on how to deal with changes in one’s life (anecdotally, mice in a maze sniff around to find their cheese, they do, then somehow the cheese is moved, and the mice have to start all over and sniff their way to find it again)…something we can all relate to. I’m looking for my cheese right now, evaluating the decisions I’ve made up until this point in my professional life, and trying to see where I’m headed. Often, I’ve decided to move my own cheese. Change is good. Well, when you are the one to initiate the change, it’s usually good. When something else moves your cheese it’s downright unsettling.
When I was a young twenty-something I felt very much in control of my professional development (didn’t we all?). The JET Program started a great journey and unsurprisingly set my career path for more than a decade following. I applied for it on a whim after college, and started to move my cheese. What an exciting year that was! The time immediately following my return home from Japan was also one of fun professional discovery, as it is for most JET alums. In 1995 I finished my JET contract in Kagoshima and dabbled in the fields of international education and international relations. The non-profit world drew me in, and my career path started to take shape. Over the course of the next few years I worked at Japan Society for a bit, set my sights on graduate studies at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and then became a program officer at Columbia’s Center on Japanese Economy and Business. I found a very active JET alumni community working and studying at Columbia, which was great, because that meant I was with people who sincerely understood and valued the depth of experience I had while working and living in Japan. Grad school was the very logical next step for me to take, and in 1999, I was accepted into the program at SIPA after two arduous rounds of applications. Then the real work started. I surprised myself and chose an international finance and business concentration (you see, as an English major in college I somehow skated through four years without having one accounting or economics class). Perhaps I was overly-confident of my ability to take on new challenges after living in Japan, or, I was being practical — I knew if I wanted to be an effective organizational leader when I grew up, I’d need strong quantitative and finance skills. The next big journey started, and for three years I held on to my full-time job while doing my graduate work. I moved on up to the east side into a shoebox of an apartment on 88th Street and cried through every Accounting 101 assignment in the wee hours of the morning, with text books and papers scattered across my very stylish black pleather futon. Painful, but good years. In retrospect, no matter how challenging the work, life in general had order to it. I was on the path to one clear, undeniable goal of getting that degree. Sometimes I miss the simplicity of it all!
Working as a program officer at an international research center in a top academic institution may sound truly awesome, and it was. However, I did plan to move my cheese once I finished my degree to explore other opportunities. Well, life is what happens between making plans. September 11th happened…during my final year at SIPA. On-campus recruiting came to a halt. The job market froze. The world turned upside down and we all seemed to function at a bare minimum — or at best, on autopilot for a while, trying to cope with the shock of it all. Not so good times.
Grateful to have a very good job in a very good place, I stayed on at the Center. I was promoted up to a Director position, took part in some groundbreaking research and programs, and managed two major book projects with leading Japan scholars around the globe. I had a great team, an awesome sempai, a nurturing and encouraging environment, and I learned volumes about management. Then, it came time again for me to break out and explore. But wait– it’s 2008. The economy is tanking. I had a stable job at a good place (something I covet now). What do I do? I choose to leave it and become an entrepreneur. Read More
Job: ESL Instructor to Japanese children (Dublin, OH)
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JET alum Daniel Stone’s ESL business continues to grow and he is looking to hire ESL instructors to work in Dublin, OH. 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: ESL Instructor to Japanese children
Posted by: Daniel Stone’s ESL
Location: Dublin, OH
Type: Part-time
Overview:
Looking for experienced instructors of English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) to deliver lessons face to face between the hours of 9am to 5:30pm Monday thru Friday in the Dublin, OH area. Content of the lessons will range from English conversation, after school tutoring, and test preparation (EIKEN and TOEFL). Students will primarily be elementary and junior high school age students grades K-8 with limited English from Japan.
Those instructors selected will be paid a hourly flat fee for transportation to the client, prep time, materials used for the lesson, and the actual delivery of the lesson. Read More
USC International MBA seeks JET alumni – Wed, Oct 8, 7pm (Shibuya)
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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: USC International MBA seeks JET alumni
Posted by: USC International MBA
Location: Shibuya
Overview:
The University of Southern California IBEAR MBA program will do an information session on Wednesday, October 8 at 7 pm at AGOS in Shibuya. We are also hoping to meet JET alumni who submit a resume and GMAT or GRE score in advance.
See Ibear.com and contact kurdian@marshall.usc.edu or 2137407138.
I’ll Make It Myself!: Whole-Wheat Blueberry-Lavender Muffins
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L.M. Zoller (CIR Ishikawa-ken, Anamizu, 2009-11) is the editor of The Ishikawa JET Kitchen: Cooking in Japan Without a Fight. Ze works in international student exchange; writes I’ll Make It Myself!, a blog about food culture in Japan and the US; curates The Rice Cooker Chronicles, a series of essays by JETs and JET alumni on the theme of cooking/eating and being alone in Japan; and admins The JET Alumni Culinary Group on LinkedIn.
Muffins are lovely to make in a moven/oven range. Blueberries tend to be in season in Japan around June-July, and culinary lavender can be purchased in Japan, though where you get it may depend on where you live. I found some at Ikeda Herb Center in Nagano and Nunobiki Herb Garden (English, 日本語) in Kobe, and a friend gave me some from Meidi-ya in Kyoto. If you don’t live near a place that grows lavender, you might try a gourmet grocery or import store, or online. Lavender meant for cooking may be referred to as dried lavender (kansô rabendâ, 乾燥ラベンダー ) or culinary lavender (ryôriyô no rabendâ, 料理用のラベンダー ).
“Hopefully the lines between my actual experiences and pure fiction are seamless. When readers ask me, ‘Is this part true?’ they seem surprised by the answers. So that makes me happy—the fiction is believable and sometimes the outrageous is the truth.” (Courtesy of William Fraser)
By Rafael Villadiego (Nagasaki-ken, 2010-13) for JQ magazine. A member of JETAA New South Wales, Rafael is a collector of words on a journey still searching for a destination, who has a tendency to forget, we are all sometimes like the rain…
Laurie Fraser (Osaka-fu, 1997-98) is a writer and traveler who married a Kurd in Turkey in the 1990s. The experience inspired The Word Not Spoken, semi-autobiographical debut novel that blurs the line between reality and fiction, casting light on a tumultuous period in history through the eyes of those who experienced it firsthand.
The conflict between the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] and the Turkish Armed Forces has its roots in the First World War and continues to have repercussions for the region to this day. But beyond these grand struggles are the quiet moments in between: The ordinary challenges and trivial frustrations of everyday life, and the more overarching issues of culture and religion, which Fraser approaches with a genuine curiosity and gentle humor that forms the emotional core of her book.
An extensive traveler to a number of different countries across the globe, Fraser has experienced life in the broadest context before eventually finding her way “home.” Now a teacher and healer in Ottawa, JQ caught up with her to discuss the events of her life that inspired the novel and how they contrasted with her time on the JET Program.
What led you to first write this novel, and why did it take so long for the finished work to see light?
The scene where Ahmet and Leigh meet a group of destitute Kurdish refugees is exactly true, except that it happened in 1996, not 1995. I decided then to write a book and tell their story in a way that wasn’t “bad news.” At that time, my husband believed that the world would never hear about the Kurds if the PKK wasn’t setting off bombs. I recognized that as a Canadian, I had a right that he did not—the right to free speech.
I am a poet at heart, and I found a novel to be unwieldy to say the least. I had the poet’s need to touch every word over and over—so that slowed me down.
The Word Not Spoken was refused by countless publishers—I had a stack of rejection letters collected just in the year I was in Japan. It did well in a Canadian national writing contest in 2000, but only the winner was published. I was incapacitated with illness for a few years, but I eventually did a huge rewrite in 2010-11 with a professional editor. The manuscript did get better and better over the years, but it wasn’t until self-publishing became accessible and respected that I finally decided to go for it on my own.
I promised those refugees and my husband (who was killed in 1997) that I would publish their stories and really, it was a stone in my stomach for 18 years.
Kurdish House in Vancouver flew me out there (from Ottawa) to read to a large Kurdish audience this past spring. Afterwards, men and women came to talk to me: “I lived in one of those tents for four years.” “I was tortured 45 days.”
I have been haunted by the refugees I met living in those tents in 1996. I couldn’t imagine how any of them would have survived. These Vancouverites were an affirmation of life—some of them had made it! Some of them would have been children in 1996…and here they were! All I could say was, “I’m so glad you got here. I prayed for you.” And indeed, I wrote a book for them.
Job: Private ESL tutor for Japanese clients (West New York NY)
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Thanks to Noriko at the Consulate for putting this company in touch with JETwit. 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: Legal Manager
Location: West New York NY
Type: Full-time
Overview:
We are currently looking for an ESL tutor in West New York, NJ. for a couple of clients of ours and I wanted to inquire whether you know someone who would be interested in working with them. The class schedule and location are as follows, Read More
Job: Research Asst, Political/Economic Affairs – Japanese Consulate
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Originally posted to JETAA Great Lakes by Rhea Young. 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: Research Asst, Political/Economic Affairs
Posted by: Japanese Consulate
Location: Detroit, MI
Type: Full-time
Overview:
In 1993, as a result of the growing number of Japanese residents and businesses in Michigan and Ohio, the Consulate-General of Japan in Detroit was established. Consulate survey results indicate a combined total of nearly 900 Japanese owned facilities in Michigan and Ohio. The current two-state population of Japanese nationals exceeds 24,000.
Important consulate missions include: providing support and service to local Japanese nationals, promoting trade and business development between Japan and the U.S., and strengthening U.S.-Japan relations and mutual understanding through various local economic, educational and cultural activities and exchanges. Read More
Job: Interpretation J-E – temporary position (Madison, WI)
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A JET-relevant posting from Kio Lance (Shimane-ken from 2003-05), who incidentally mentioned that he found his own current job via JETwit. (He’s a reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun in LA.) 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: Interpretation J-E
Dates: Oct. 22-24 (2014)
Job Description:Provide basic interpretation for a visiting Japanese national who will be attending a training on how to teach handicapped people.
Salary: $200/day (no travel compensation will be provided)
Contact for further questions: Kio Lance at kio.lance@yomiurila.com
Job: Resident Assistant at St. John’s University (Seville, Spain)
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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 Resident Assistant will work on-call shifts during nights and weekends in order to provide support to students outside of normal business hours. Resident Assistant will maintain ten scheduled office hours per week, during normal office hours, in order to complete any required administrative tasks. Duties and responsibilities will include: aiding students in the event of an emergency; enforcing St. John’s University regulations in the residences; reporting any violation of St. John’s University policies to the Assistant Director; performing scheduled checks of the facilities; providing emotional support to students studying abroad and adjusting to life in Seville; assisting students with conflict resolution; and conducting interesting and engaging programming for resident students.
Responsibilities
Top responsibilities of a Resident Assistant:
Read More
Job: George Mason University, Program Officer, Center for Global Education
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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 George Mason University Center for Global Education is hiring a Program Officer to administer, manage and promote the university’s study abroad programs.
Responsibilities:
Duties include managing the application, registration, marketing, and administration of study abroad programs. Specific duties include:
-Establish and maintain contact with appropriate administrative units on campus and universities abroad;
-Facilitate student enrollment;
-Maintain student records;
-Advise on short-term, semester, faculty-led, and internship programs;
-Promote and market programs; and create, maintain and publish program materials; and
-Liaise with educational institutions abroad, travel vendors, and international organizations.
Read More
Job: Executive Staff Assistant – International Department (University of Cincinnati)
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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.
-Post charges and grants on Students Accounts in UniverSIS.
-Assist with organizing Faculty-led Study Abroad Programs.
-Run reports, process purchase requisitions, credit card review, and timekeeping in UC Flex.
-Assist Business Administrator with department financials.
-Process transcripts
: Under general supervision from a designated administrator, assist in the planning and coordination of administration and/or operational activities of substantial variety and complexity in a unit or department of considerable size and/or diversification.
Job: Western Kentucky University – Study Away Coordinator
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Posted by Sean Pavlik (Fukui-ken, 2010-12), International Programs Officer for the DC-based Congressional Study Group on Japan. Thanks to JET alum David Nelson, the database coordinator for Western Kentucky U’s international student program, for sharing this listing.Click here to join the JETwit Jobs Google Group and receive job listings even sooner by email.
Western Kentucky University welcomes applications for the position of Coordinator, Study Away Programs.
The Coordinator is part of a team responsible developing/managing programs and fulfilling travel details for faculty-led programs in both the United States and multiple countries.
Review of applications will start immediately and will close once a sufficient pool of applicants has accrued.
To learn more about the position and to apply, please visit: http://wku.interviewexchange.com/jobofferdetails.jsp;jsessionid=141C87E4A6783CEEB1E08261944052EF?JOBID=53370&CNTRNO=0&TSTMP=1411575769849
