UK JET alum Edward Drummond-Baxter killed while serving in Afghanistan
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Lt. Edward Drummond-Baxter (Gifu-ken, 2005-07)
I’m very sad to share that a JET alum, Edward Drummond-Baxter (Gifu-ken, 2005-07), was recently killed while serving in Afghanistan according to a BBC News article. The article doesn’t indicate that Edward was a JET, but a post by someone to the Pacific Northwest JETAA group about the news indicated that he was a Gifu JET from 2005-07.
Here’s an excerpt from the article (“MoD names two British soldiers killed in Afghanistan“):
Two British soldiers shot dead in Afghanistan by a man wearing an Afghan police uniform have been named by the Ministry of Defence.
They were Lt Edward Drummond-Baxter and L/Cpl Siddhanta Kunwar, both of 1st Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles, attached to 40 Commando Royal Marines.
They were killed at a checkpoint while on patrol in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province on Tuesday.
Lt Drummond-Baxter, 29, lived in County Durham and L/Cpl Kunwar, 28, Nepal.
The MoD said they were shot and killed at the end of a meeting with Afghan police at Check Point Prrang in the southern part of Nahr-e Saraj.
The Taliban said the gunman was in their protection after having infiltrated the Afghan police.
Platoon commander Lt Drummond-Baxter, who was born in Peterborough, was deployed to Afghanistan for the first time on 30 September.
He was commissioned into the 1st Battalion in 2010 after spending two years working for the Foreign Office. He was a member of reserves regiment The Honourable Artillery Company while at University College London and later attended Sandhurst.
His family said: “Edward was fiercely loyal and totally sincere to his parents, sister and many friends who are mourning him today both in the UK and around the world. He loved the Gurkhas and died among friends doing the job that he wanted to do.”
Lt Col David Robinson, commanding officer, described him as “a character, a true gentleman and an inspirational leader”.
Please feel free to share any memories, thoughts or other comments about Edward in the comments section of this post.
JET Alum Will Ferguson Wins Canadian Lit Award
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Click image for JQ magazine’s 2010 feature story on Will Ferguson
From the Associated Press via the New York Times:
On Oct. 30, celebrated JET alum author Will Ferguson (Nagasaki-ken, 1991-94) won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, a $50,000 Canadian fiction award, for a his novel 419, about a family’s entanglement in a Nigerian email scam.
A kilt-wearing Ferguson pulled out a flask during his acceptance speech and raised a toast to the written word. Presenters included Sex and the City actress Kim Cattrall.
The Giller, which honors the best in Canadian fiction, was created in 1994 by businessman Jack Rabinovitch in memory of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller.
Tuesday’s ceremony was broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. For a CBC video of Ferguson on writing 419 and being a Giller finalist, click here.
Kagoshima JET seeks help improving new language learning technology
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A chance to help a JET improve on a really great language technology tool. See below:
My name is Jonathan Andreano and I am currently a 2nd year JET in Kagoshima Prefecture. At the start of this year, I began collaborating with friends from university to help develop Language Cloud, a free learning management system (LMS) designed for language education. In short, it helps provide instructors with an easy to use and, more importantly, free online platform for managing and enhancing the quality of their classes, while simultaneously promoting student collaboration and enthusiasm for foreign languages and culture through school-based social networking.
The development of Language Cloud’s academic interface was significantly influenced by our team’s personal experiences in learning and teaching foreign languages. One of our top priorities has been to create a resource that specifically addresses the common ALT challenge — teaching students of different academic levels at multiple schools. For this reason, Language Cloud was designed specifically with flexibility and user experience (UX) in mind.
Teachers can record audio directly on their browsers, quickly assess and mark writing assignments, and starting in January 2013, integrate their favorite textbooks and e-learning apps into their Language Clouds. These features were developed by working directly with instructors and have helped Language Cloud gain popularity within university language departments and private language schools. Currently, 50 institutions with approximately 7,000 students are actively using the Language Cloud beta platform.
Our team would like to continue connecting with instructors of K-12 classrooms to gain their perspective and feedback. For this reason, I wanted to reach out to JET alumni for their support and professional opinion of our free instructional technology. To get a better understanding of our educational resource, a fully interactive demo of the Language Cloud LMS is accessible on our homepage (https://www.languagecloud.co/).
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me at jonathan@languagecloud.co
Job: Virtual Concierge (Seattle / Bellevue / Renton)
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Via JETAA Pacific North West. Posted by Kay Monroe (Miyazaki-shi, 1995 -97). Click here to join the JETwit Jobs Google Group and receive job listings even sooner by email.
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Position: Virtual Concierge
Posted by: 2 Places At 1 Time, Inc.
Type: Part-time
Location: Seattle / Bellevue / Renton
Salary: $20 per billable hour
Start Date: N/A
Overview:
(Job offer from a fellow JET!)
Join [2 Places At 1 Time, Inc.] as Virtual Concierge for professionals. Job duties include shopping, event planning, pet care, and more. Must have a flexible schedule. This is part-time work, up to 5-10 hours a week. Looking for an individual with thorough knowledge of Seattle and surrounding areas; has reliable transportation and strong customer service experience. This position will require frequent travel in the Seattle – Bellevue – Renton areas. Mileage will be reimbursed. Submit your resume for consideration. All applicants must include a paragraph stating why you are the best candidate for this position.
Once we receive your submission, we’ll send you a quick assessment to make sure this is the right position for you. If everything works out, you’ll receive a call from a recruiting manager within 72 business hours and could become a Virtual Concierge within 2 weeks.
If interested, please contact valeriestewart@2places.com (JET Alum in Atlanta!) and let her know you are a part of PNWJETAA. Yoroshiku!
Job: JET Office Assistant, Embassy of Japan (London)
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Via JETAA UK. Posted by Kay Monroe (Miyazaki-shi, 1995 -97). Click here to join the JETwit Jobs Google Group and receive job listings even sooner by email.
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Position: Office Assistant – JET Desk
Posted by: Embassy of Japan
Type: Full Time Temporary
Location: London, UK
Salary: N/A
Start Date: N/A
Overview:
This is a full-time post, on a temporary basis. This post requires a former ALT participant on the JET Programme from the UK who has excellent communication skills, a good command of English, and is a good user of windows office software (i.e. Power Point, Excel, Word etc).
The job involves office administration including answering endless enquiry e-mails/phone calls and help JET interviewees by answering various questions during the interview procedure under the supervision of the Coordinator for Educational Affairs.
The contract starts early December and ends on the last working day of February 2013. After successfully completing the first contract, it will then be renewed until the end of July 2013.
Please send your CV with a covering letter stating why you think you are suited to do the job and how you can contribute to the job by November 15, 2012 to:
Ms. Miki Nemoto
Embassy of Japan, 101-104 Piccadilly, London
info@jet-uk.org
Interview is expected to be held in mid-late November.
Hard worker with patience is required.
http://www.jetaa.org.uk/jobs/jet-office-assistant/
JET Alum Helps Moss Point Mississippi High School Host Japanese Students for Cultural Exchange
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Via WLOX.com. Posted by Kay Monroe (Miyazaki-shi, 1995 -97). Click here to join the JETwit Jobs Google Group and receive job listings even sooner by email.
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Moss Point High School’s Japanese club hosted 30 Japanese students in Moss Point Mississippi for a unique experience through the Kizuna Project with JET Alum Megan Bernard.
WLOX.com – The News for South Mississippi
Isn’t Japan Supposed to be Polite?
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Posted by Benjamin Martin, a 5th year JET in Okinawa, publisher of the blog MoreThingsJapanese.com and author of the YA fantasy novel Samurai Awakening (Tuttle).
For those of you who don’t know, I spent my first three years in Japan living on Kitadaito Island. Kitadaito is a small island 320km east of the mainland of Okinawa. While I was there, I experienced the close community of rural Japan, and started writing. A bit over a year ago, I moved to Kumejima which his far larger. Since this is my last year with the JET Programme, I decided to visit Kitadaito during their annual Daitogusai Festival. While I still stayed in contact with many people from Kitadaito, and even saw them occasionally on the mainland, it was the first time I had really seen everyone in over a year.
A year might not seem like a long time to you, but in Japan things can change a lot. Teachers, doctors, and other civil servants often change jobs every few years. On Kitadaito, Junior High graduates have to leave the island since there is no high school for them. So even though it had only been a year, some students and friends were gone, many students had gotten bigger or changed, and there were new people to meet.
Perhaps most surprising was the fact that I had changed too. When I came to Japan I weighed 80kg (that’s 176lbs for all you non-metric people). If you’ve read Samurai Awakening, you probably figured out I played a lot of sports while I was there, and with all the running and sports festivals, I kept in decent shape. Things change though
Back to Daito
So last month, I went back to Kitadaito for 5 days. Nearly the first thing, every single person said to me was “太った” (futotta). Now if you plug that into Google Translate, you’ll get a translation of “Fat” with alternatives of “Chubby” and “Plump.”
Why did literally at least 15 people say this to me on my first day back? Well because when I went I was about 91kg (200lbs). But aren’t Japanese people supposed to be polite? Don’t they ignore stuff so that they can live through dealing with stuffed subway cars and close quarters? Strangely enough, there’s a lot going on in that simple little phrase, and a lot of different meanings.
…Read the full article at MoreThingsJapanese.com
WIT Life #218: Hold These Truths
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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 together with her own observations.
This weekend I went to see the heralded play Hold These Truths being shown at the 14th Street Y. It starts Joel de la Fuente as Gordon Hirabayashi, second generation Japanese-American who defied Executive Order 9066, which led to the forced interment of Japanese Americans in camps during World War II. De la Fuente (10-year veteran of Law and Order SVU) brings his proven acting chops to this one-man show, in which he plays not only the role of Hirabayashi himself, but also those of family, friends, law enforcement, lawyers, etc.
The play traces Hirabayashi’s journey as a boy growing up in Seattle to university student to imprisoned activist to the eventually taking of his case all the way to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately the Court unanimously rules against Hirabayashi and the other two Japanese-American resistors, but he is vindicated when Read More
JQ Magazine: JQ&A with Jenn Doane of the Hiroshima Ange Violet
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“On JET I was deeply involved in both my town and my prefecture, and in turn developed close relationships with both foreigners and Japanese people. Seattle is a diverse place, but I don’t think I would ever have had such a dynamic and interesting life outside of my day job!”
Seattle native Jenn Doane (Shimane-ken, 2010-12) has played soccer since she was eight years old. Having been a four-year starter on her high school varsity team, a three-year starter in college, and selected to play for the Olympic Development Program, she is now the first American to play professional soccer on a Japanese team, the Hiroshima Ange Violet. JQ learned all about her path to the team in this exclusive interview.
How did you become interested in Japan and the JET Program?
I have known about the JET Program since I was young, actually—my parents were both very involved in the Japanese community in Seattle: My mother was the executive director of the Japan America Society and the Japanese American Chamber of Commerce, and my dad served as president of the Society as well, and I think they have even been asked to be interviewers for prospective JET candidates. However, as any teenager would, I wasn’t interested in anything my parents were! I am three-fourths Japanese and one-fourth Caucasian (my mom is full, my dad is half, and both were born and raised in America).
I wasn’t necessarily ashamed of being Japanese, but I grew up in a mostly Caucasian suburb–and while I don’t think I was ever really picked on or anything, being Japanese wasn’t something I was overly proud of! You should have seen the reactions of my friends when I sometimes brought onigiri and kamaboko in my school lunch!
I was planning to be a Spanish major in college until my junior year when I decided to switch my focus to Japanese and study abroad in Osaka. I think I finally came around and got more curious about my heritage and the Japanese language. Many students from my college (Whitman) do the JET Program, and after a wonderful study abroad experience and hearing from all the raving alums, I thought it would be the perfect thing to do after graduating. So, here I am (or rather, there I was…).
I noticed you were a violinist for the Whitman Women’s Symphony. Any plans to continue with the violin in Japan?
Unfortunately, I have not touched a violin in a long time—however, I really have a passion for music and have found other ways to realize the musician in me! I joined a singing group in the countryside (we sing all the Glee hits) and have also been learning guitar. If I had easier access to a violin, I would definitely love to get back into it!
If you don’t mind sharing, what was it like to be on JET and teach at schools during the time of the disasters last year?
Compared to the JETs and teachers actually living in Tohoku, I can’t say that things were dramatically different. However, there was a kind of solemnness in the air after what happened— lots of moments of silence, and donations boxes all around school and town. One of my college friends is a JET in Miyagi Prefecture and we couldn’t get a hold of him for two weeks after the earthquake…it was terrifying. Thankfully, he had been at a relief shelter without Internet or phone access.
I also had the opportunity to volunteer in one of the hardest hit towns of Tohoku (Kesennuma) about six months after the tsunami, just helping sort debris and cleaning ruined houses, and it was such a moving experience—I met some incredibly strong and inspiring people, people who lost loves ones, everything they owned, or both.
Call for Artists for New Feature: JET Alum Artist Beat
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JET Alum Artist Beat is a new feature organized by Jessica Sattell (Fukuoka-ken, 2007-2008) intending to share the wide scope of creative work that JET alumni are pursuing as artists, designers, and/or craftspeople, either professionally or for personal enjoyment. She is interested in interviewing and providing exposure for artists of all mediums, and welcomes links to online portfolios or stores.
The beauty (and the greatest strength) of the JET program is that is attracts such a wide variety of dedicated, talented people from all walks of life. We’re a wonderfully diverse bunch, and JET allows us to further explore and develop our interests, hobbies, and passions within new communities. Whether you’re an alum, a current JET or a prospective JET, we all have stories to tell about how Japan has inspired us, no matter our professional path.
As an aspiring fashion stylist living in Japan during my JET tenure, I saw my own creativity blossom exponentially. My community’s many galleries, museums, cafes and shops spoke to Japan’s inherent acceptance of a DIY mentality and curiosity about art. While I didn’t choose to pursue a path in fashion, I did follow my love of visual art and am crafting a career to help promote the work of artists and creative individuals.
JET Alum Artist Beat aims to profile JETs working as professional artists or who create art for personal enjoyment. There are many JET alums working as artists and in the art world, and many of them wear several different hats! Explore the Art Library here at JETwit to learn more about what some of them are up to, and check out the art category archives for a glimpse of some past projects involving the JET community. There’s also the JET Alum Creative Types LinkedIn group, which is open to new members.
Are you an artist, designer or craftsperson? We’d love to hear your story and share your creative work in a profile piece. Contact Jessica at hello.jessicasattell (at) gmail (dot) com to say hello and introduce yourself!
I’ll Make It Myself!: Halloween Taste-Testing: Koshiyama Kanseido Pumpkin Dorayaki
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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. A writer and web administrator for The Art of Travel, ze also writes I’ll Make It Myself!, a blog about food culture in Japan, and 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.
New Rice Cooker Chronicles submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to jetwit [at] jetwit.com.
Image from Koshiyama Kanseido. (http://www.koshiyamakanseido.jp/shopping/kisetsu/halloween.html)
This is a bit ぎりぎり since Halloween is right around the corner, but if you are in Kanazawa or will be there this weekend for Halloween festivities, be sure to try the pumpkin dorayaki at Koshiyama Kanseido.
Job: Employment Opportunity Administrative Assistant
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Via JETAA-DC. Posted by Kay Monroe (Miyazaki-shi, 1995 -97). Click here to join the JETwit Jobs Google Group and receive job listings even sooner by email.
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Position: Administrative Assistant
Posted by: Embassy of Japan
Type: Full-time
Location: Washington, DC
Salary: N/A
Start Date: N/A
Overview:
The Embassy of Japan is seeking an individual for the position of administrative assistant at the Political Desk. The Embassy offers group health insurance coverage, paid vacation and sick leave. Salary is commensurate with experience.
Requirements:
•Must be a U.S. Citizen or green card holder
•Fluent in English and Japanese preferred.
•Ability to use computer applications such as Microsoft Windows, Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. Read More
Be a Host School for the Japanese Language Education Assistant Program (J-LEAP)
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Thanks to JET alum Stephen Smith for sharing this information. Posted by Kay Monroe (Miyazaki-shi, 1995 -97). Click here to join the JETwit Jobs Google Group and receive job listings even sooner by email.
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Applications to be a host school for the Japanese Language Education Assistant Program (J-LEAP) are now available online. This program seeks K-12 Japanese language teachers to apply to become supervisors to young, native Japanese teaching assistants who have studied Japanese language pedagogy. In addition to receiving a teaching assistant for two years, selected schools will be provided with a $1,000 stipend to purchase teaching materials for the Japanese language classroom.
Please not that J-LEAP teaching assistants cannot serve as independent teachers in the classroom. They are not certified and need to be supervised by a certified teacher.
Please click on the link below and scroll down to the J-LEAP section. You will find links to downloadable program prospectus and application on the right. (Deadline: all application materials need to be submitted by January 31.)
http://www.laurasian.org/Programs.htm
JETAA USA National Conference in San Francisco this weekend
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I’m heading to San Francisco today to participate in the the JETAA USA Conference for the next four days hosted by JETAA Northern California. A great opportunity to meet and work with officers from the 19 US chapters to build and strengthen the JET alumni community and its goals and purposes.
Steven Horowitz (Aichi-ken, 1992-94)
Job: Postings from Idealist.org 10.24.12
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Via Idealist.org. Posted by Geneva Marie (Niigata-ken 2008-09) Geneva is a contributor to both JETwit and JETAANY. Geneva is on a continuous (epic) search for Japanese-related jobs in the United States. Click here to join the JETwit Jobs Google Group and receive job listings even sooner by email.
Grants Associate with Give2Asia
Posted by: The Asia Foundation
Type: Full-time
Location: San Francisco, CA
Salary: Commensurate with experience
Application Deadline: November 2, 2012
Give2Asia is seeking a highly organized and motivated professional to become our new Grants Associate. The Grants Associate is responsible for supporting grant-making and donor stewardship activities. Bachelors degree with minimum 2-3 years of professional experience required. Interest in international philanthropy and international development preferred.
http://www.idealist.org/view/job/xPTGS3GhB7SP/
Au Pair Coordinator
Posted by: Cultural International Homestay (C.H.I)
Type: Part-time/Contract
Location: Milwaukee, WI
Salary: Approx 1000/placement per year
Application Deadline: Not Specified
The J1 Au Pair program is looking for a local coordinator ( APC – Au Pair Coordinator) for the Milwaukee area. The coordinator would be responsible for developing the area from the ground up and would be expected to spend between 2-5 hours a week assisting families and Au Pairs as well as marketing. This is a part time independent contractor position and coordinators are paid for each family they recruit who places with an Au Pair.
http://www.idealist.org/view/job/xPM2f5MP5gnp/
