New LinkedIn group for JET Alum HR Professionals (and those interested)
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I’ve set up a new LinkedIn group for JET Alum HR Professionals:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3709611
The purpose is to enable those JET alums and Friends of JET in the field to connect. And also to provide a resource for JETs and JET alums interested in the field.
Paul Benson (Fukui-ken, 2006-08) is a New York-based freelance translator who has handled assignments ranging from securities laws to cook books. A Translator’s Life follows some of Paul’s experiences as he makes his way in the J->E translation world.
On Monday afternoon I had the pleasure of attending a small informal interview–all in Japanese–hosted by Shūkan NY Seikatsu (週刊ＮＹ生活), a free, weekly Japanese newspaper available in New York. They wanted to get a few JETs together to talk about our experiences for a special New Year’s issue to be published in a few weeks.
A little background: I was in Japan (Fukui-ken) for two years and returned in 2008 to immediately enter graduate school for Japanese at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. While many returnees feel the need to constantly talk about their incredible experiences, I could not have felt more differently. In my first year I was surrounded by students interested in applying for JET (they didn’t want to talk about anything else) and in my second year I was so busy researching and writing I didn’t really think about my time on JET. In some ways this had the disservice of leading me to devalue my time in Japan, to shelve it and move on.
There were six JET alums in total at the interview: Steven Horowitz, Kia Cheleen, Jon Hills (who provided the venue at his company, Hills Learning), Tamar Entis, Stacy Smith and myself. Shūkan NY Seikatsu‘s Publisher & CEO Ryoichi Miura and and reporter Kaoru Komi asked us what we learned from Japan, what we loved about our areas, what we thought was cool about Japan, and what are reactions were to some of the criticisms Japanese teachers have of JETs (all of which you can read about in their upcoming free publication).
I found myself pleasantly surprised at how unique and special each JET’s experience was. I also recalled what I was told countless times before I went: “ESID” (Every Situation Is Different), and it’s still true. Time passing hasn’t made my JET experience any less unique. The only difference is that now I like it that way.
I hope many of you get the chance to check out the article in Shūkan NY Seikatsu when it comes out December 28. (I’ll be sure to post a summary translation of it on the JetWit site for those who need it.)
Design the Nengajo New Year’s Postcard for JETAA Northern California
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Via JETAA Northern California:
JETAANC is looking for one of our talented alumni to design our 2011 Nengajo New Year’s postcard.
The card will be sent out to all of our members later this month, so alumni across two states will enjoy your work. Put your creativity to good use and add a piece to your portfolio!
Send your conceptual design in PDF format to communications [at] jetaanc.org by this Friday, December 10.
We will select a design this weekend and ask the designer to finalize it early next week for print.
Design in black & white for the front of a standard sized postcard.
2011 is the Year of the Rabbit, so make sure this lucky animal is the focus of your design!”
Job: IT Helpdesk Position (Bi-lingual English/Japanese)
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via The Japan America Society. Posted by Dipika Soni (Ishikawa-ken, 2003-06). Dipika currently works as an in-house translator for PFU (a Fujitsu company) in Kahoku-shi, Ishikawa-ken. She is also the vocalist for the Japanese hardcore punk band DEGRADE.
*Note: If you apply for this position, please let them know you learned of it from JetWit. Thanks.
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Job Position: IT Helpdesk (Bi-lingual English/Japanese)
Job Details:
S&K Global Solutions has at least 1 job opening coming up in January for a person fluent in Japanese and English to work on the IT Helpdesk at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton WA. This position requires US citizenship and the ability to obtain a DOD security clearance.
How to apply:
See S&K Global Solutions website for more information http://www.skgs-llc.com/Careers/CareerOpportunities/tabid/105/Default.aspx
JET Alum J.D. Sparks elected Magistrate and Justice of the Peace in Kentucky
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Thanks to JET alum Terry Vo of the Consulate General of Japan in Nashville for sharing this press release. Terry also serves as President of JETAA Music City (i.e., Nashville).
Pewee Valley, Oldham County, KY – November 2, 2010 J.D. Sparks, A former JET participant and current JETAA member, was elected as Magistrate and Justice of the Peace to Oldham County’s Fiscal Court for Oldham County’s fifth Magisterial District.
JD ran as a Republican in the Primary against incumbent Iva Davis and won the slot as the Republican Candidate on the ticket. He was then unopposed in the General Election. This is JD’s first election for public office. The duties will include evaluation of budgets for the county, new ordinances, taxing issues and a host of other public duties to insure the welfare of the community. In addition the Justices are able to marry people in the County. The position includes the traditional title of Squire.
Along with Mr Sparks there were a number of first time nominees that won their elections and a new Judge Executive. While the position is considered full time most members traditionally maintain their regular jobs and serve as part time citizen legislators. JD will maintain his position as Executive Vice President of Public Equity Group, a firm that does international financing. JD says, “I hope my years of international business operations and political volunteerism will help me in this position.” And goes on to say, “I want to be the People’s voice on the court and uphold the ideals that I was elected under.”
JD and the others in this new administration will be sworn in on December 3rd at the Oldham County Court House. Their first meeting will be the following day to discuss the business of the Community and his position has a four year term. He will represent the 5th Magisterial District, which encompasses the southern part of Oldham County to include the outlying areas of Pewee Valley, Crestwood and the Worth districts. Oldham County is recognized in Kentucky as the county with the highest mean income per household and best schools in the Commonwealth.
While on the JET program, JD was a member of the AJET national Council as Vice Chair and served on his local AJET board for 3 years. He is married to Japanese national and former Middle school teacher Yuko Sunaga Sparks of Ogama-machi, Japan. She currently teaches at the The Greater Louisville Regional Japanese Saturday School hosted at Indiana University South East. They are also members of the Japan Club of Greater Louisville. They have two sons: Manabu and Kenta Sparks. JD is very proud of his Japanese Heritage (his family came from Kitsuki Japan in 1905) and has a minor in Asian American Studies from Loyola University Chicago.
Job: Google Tokyo Product Manager
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via The Japan America Society. Posted by Dipika Soni (Ishikawa-ken, 2003-06). Dipika currently works as an in-house translator for PFU (a Fujitsu company) in Kahoku-shi, Ishikawa-ken. She is also the vocalist for the Japanese hardcore punk band DEGRADE.
*Note: If you apply for this position, please let them know you learned of it from JetWit. Thanks.
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Job Position: Product Manager
Job Details:
You will join Google’s product management team as a talented, ambitious, self-directed technologist and will guide our products from conception to launch. You are eager to improve information access for millions of people and have a proven track record of excellence. As a Google product manager, your responsibilities will include gathering requirements, helping to define a product vision and strategy, and working with world-class engineers to execute that strategy.
Responsibilities:
1. Initiate new products and product enhancements to meet existing or anticipated market needs
2. Engage closely with the engineering team to help determine the best technical implementation methods as well as a reasonable execution schedule, prioritize projects and track development
3. Work with a cross-functional internal team (e.g. sales, client services, marketing, legal, etc) to ensure smooth and successful launches
4. Establish short and long term product goals and strategies
Requirements
1. BS degree preferred with strong academic record (MS or PhD in Computer Science or related field a plus)
2. Demonstrated experience in shipping products (concept to launch).
3. Good understanding of user needs in Japan and an innovative history of addressing them.
4. Market knowledge of Internet-related industries.
5. Excellent organizational skills including the ability to build effective working relationships with colleagues and partners.
6. Fluent English communication skills is a must. (Japanese is desirable but not essential)
About Product Management at Google:
One of the many reasons Google consistently brings innovative, world-changing products to market is because of the collaborative work we do in Product Management. With eyes focused squarely on the future, our team works closely with creative and prolific engineers to help design and develop technologies that improve access to the world’s information. We’re responsible for guiding products throughout the execution cycle, focusing specifically on analyzing, positioning, packaging, promoting and tailoring our solutions to all the markets where Google does business.
Contact:
To apply for this position, please contact Ray Tsuchiyama at rtsuchiyama (at) google.com
Job: Human Resource Specialist (Bi-lingual English/Japanese)
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via Jet alum Bianca Jarvis (CIR Kyoto-shi, 2002-05). Posted by Dipika Soni (Ishikawa-ken, 2003-06). Dipika currently works as an in-house translator for PFU (a Fujitsu company) in Kahoku-shi, Ishikawa-ken. She is also the vocalist for the Japanese hardcore punk band DEGRADE.
*Note: If you apply for this position, please let them know you learned of it from JetWit. Thanks.
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Job Position: Human Resource Specialist (Bi-lingual English/Japanese)
Job Description:
AON Hewitt are looking for a full-time Human Resource Specialist (Bi-lingual English/Japanese). The job is based in Lincolnshire, Illinois. This position supports the Asian offices of an existing global client. Shifts are overnight, 7pm – 5am, Sunday – Thursday nights. The work week begins Sunday evening and ends Friday morning. Hours will start 7:30pm – 4am until Japanese Daylight Savings time in October, then will be 8:30am – 5am.
This associate would work all American holidays (except Christmas and New Years); Days in Lieu of the American holidays are coordinated within the month of the holiday.
For more details, click “Read More”.
Sake World e-Newsletter by John Gauntner (December 2010)
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The December 2010 issue of the Sake World E-mail Newsletter by JET alum and the leading non-Japanese sake expert in the world, John Gauntner (aka “The Sake Guy”), is now available online. In this issue:
1. Greetings
2. Rice to Sake: How Much?
3. Did You Know?
5. Sake Basics
6. Announcements and Events: Sake Professional Course in Japan
7. Sake Education Central
Additional Links:
Help CLAIR revamp its “After JET” Handbook
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Via JETAA International Secretary Kay Dunkley.
CLAIR is in the process of re-vamping the After JET Handbook. Would you like to see any changes?
Go here to see what the handbook looks like: http://www.jetprogramme.org/e/current/pubs/after.html
Deadline for input: Saturday, December 11, 2010.
Click here to e-mail responses to Kay Dunkley.
Help CLAIR revamp its Newsletter
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Via JETAA International Secretary Kay Dunkley.
CLAIR is ready to revamp JET Streams, it’s annual newsletter. The aim is to make it look good, maximise the readers out there, making sure ALL JET Alums get it, and make it more interesting so more readers will be tuned to what JETAAI and CLAIR are doing.
Here is the list of articles that CLAIR would like to include:
1. Interesting JETAA Chapter activity articles.
2. Articles from 3 JETAA Alums, stories they would like to share about JET and Japan.
3. Articles from 3 JETAA Alums specifically talking about if they are involved in anything now that has kept up with their former contracting organisation, school to school, sister city events, etc. (or prefecture) (this is actually the hottest topic that we can use to promote the JET programme in Japan as well)
Please respond by December 27, 2010.
Click here to e-mail Kay with your input/submissions.
WIT Life #139: 60′s Japan film festival
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WITLife 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.
On Friday night I attended a free screening of the movie Yearning, which was being shown as part of the Japanese Cinema 1960’s film series at Asia Society. This organization is co-sponsoring the event along with Japan Foundation, and they have been offering complimentary tickets to the five films that were being shown over a span of a little over a month. You had to sign up ahead of time by indicating which film you wanted tickets for and officially you could only pick one, but when I went there was a stand-by line so if you go early on the day of the show you are likely to get in even without tickets.
Although Yearning was the English title of the movie, it came from the Japanese title of 乱れる (midareru), literally meaning Read More
Foxhound87: Kyoto Joy!
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Joshua Small is a First Year JET currently living in Ikaruga-cho, Nara-ken and has been chronicling his experience on his blog Snorlax87.
Last Saturday, I went to Kyoto with some Japanese friends and Rogue, a Nara JET. I woke early (on my effing weekend) and hopped the train to Nara. From Nara, I met up with Rogue and we took the train to Inari Station in Kyoto together. We had to take a local train to Inari Station so it took about an hour to get there.
Side Note: Living in Nara is amazing. Not only is Nara the cultural capital of Japan, but Nara is smack-dab in the middle of the Kansai Region. To the north, Kyoto. To the West, Osaka and Kobe. I live less than an hour from all the wonderful places in Japan. Awesome.
Rogue and I met up with the rest of the crew and we ventured into Fushimi Inari Taisha (a shrine). This shrine is amazing. The entrance is adorned with a LARGE orange gate. Once we reached the inside, we partook of some shrine rituals…
CLICK HERE to read the rest of the post.
http://snorlax87.blogspot.com/
JetWit Diary 12.03.10
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JetWit Diary is a new feature by Steven Horowitz (Aichi-ken, 1992-94), founder and publisher of JetWit. Steven is available on a consulting basis to assist organizations with any membership building, social media consulting, creative communications and writing needs.
JET and the Local Government Challenge
In light of recent information about Aichi’s decision to forgo prefectural JETs and awareness that, in contrast, Hyogo and Kobe seem to be very supportive of JET, and after a suggestion by JETAANY President-to-be Monica Yuki that perhaps it would make sense to focus our energies on the the prefectures that are the most JET-friendly, I thought it would be a good idea to figure out statistically which prefectures or contracting organizations are making the most use of JETs.
To that end, further below (after the “Read More” break) is a list of the contracting organizations with the most JET ALTs. (FYI, a “contracting organization” is a prefecture, city, board of education, etc. that allocates budget towards hiring JETs.)
In the meantime, I think it would also be very helpful to get a sense of why some contracting organizations continue to support and hire JETs while others do not. So I’d like to request that any JETs and JET alums out there (especially CIRs) get in touch if you have any perspectives based on conversations or other interactions.
- Email responses to: jetwit [at] jetwit.com
Generally speaking, of course, I’m well aware that tight budgets have a lot to do with the attrition. But it might be helpful to dig a little deeper and know why JET is prioritized above or below other budget items. Also, what factors might cause a contracting organization to change the way it views or prioritizes JET? And perhaps any ways that some prefectures may have found to extract more value (short and long term) from having JETs that helps justify the expenditures. e.g., Perhaps some prefectures have found successful ways to incorporate JETs into strong sister city relationships that continue to benefit the prefecture/city over time.
On a related note, thanks to conversations with knowledgeable JET alums, I now understand a bit more about how the relationship among budgets, the JET Program and dispatch companies such as Interac. The central government used to provide a certain amount of funds to the local governments to hire JETs. Now, as I understand it, the funds may be used to hire ALTs. This means that the local governments can (and increasingly seem to) choose to hire ALTs via a dispatch company rather than JETs. (There’s a whole separate issue on the legality of public schools hiring contract employees via dispatch companies, about which I know very little, but I don’t think it makes sense from a JETAA perspective to focus on that.)
JetWit is starting to get more and more job listings. That’s because
- We don’t charge to post job listings and circulate them to the JetWit Jobs Google group (because I never want to create barriers to JETs and JET alum access to job opportunities); and
- We’ve gotten a few more U.S.-based Japanese staffing companies to see the light, i.e., that if they’re not posting their JET-relevant jobs on JetWit, they’re missing a huge opportunity. (Though I do encourage them to make a contribution if they’re happy with the results and want to make sure that JetWit continues to exist for their benefit.)
If you know any staffing companies with JET-relevant job listings, tell them to email jetwit [at] jetwit.com and we’ll get them out to the community.
That’s all for this edition of JetWit Diary. Have a Happy Chanukah and enjoy your bounenkais.
Yoroshiku onegaishimasu,
Steven Horowitz (Aichi-ken, 1992-94)
Brooklyn, NY
jetwit [at] jetwit.com
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Thoughts on Human Capital Contracts
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Matt Leichter (matt [dot] leichter [at] gmail [dot] com) (Saitama-ken 2003-05) is a renegade attorney who plays by his own rules. He operates a think tank of one, The Law School Tuition Bubble, where he archives, chronicles, and analyzes the rising cost and declining value of legal education in the United States. He also maintains the “Bankruptcy Legal Topics,” and, “Bankruptcy Billables,” sections for Steven Horowitz’s Bankruptcy Bill. For further reading regarding JETs and the law, he recommends JETs with J.D.s.
So you’re tired of hearing about student debt. Well, so am I. You may’ve heard of investing in student equity. Wait, you haven’t? They’re called “Human Capital Contracts”—an investor (or the government) pays for your education in exchange for 10% of your income for ten years. No one else has ever tried something like this. I sat down and thought out what I think of them.
JETAANY Logo Contest – open to all
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Via JETAANY:
Calling all graphic designers, artists, and creative types!
We are looking for people to enter their designs for a new logo to be featured on JETAANY’s website, announcements, marketing materials, letterhead, business cards, etc. Your logo will be the visual cornerstone of our rebranding effort. You’ll win some prize money and some recognition, so what’s keeping you from entering?!
Prize:
In addition with providing JETAANY with a visual calling card, you will have the logo of a recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization to add to a design portfolio, and the winner will also receive $100 as a small token of our appreciation.
How to Enter:
Please send your designs to Janelle (secretary [at] jetaany.org) by November 30, 2010 December 31, 2010. The contest has been extended to allow as many entries as possible! You may enter as many designs as you like. Participants do not have to be JET Alumni or affiliated with the JET Program. To increase your chances of winning, please be sure to send in a high resolution graphic, preferably in .png/.gif/.jpg form.
Judging:
Winners will be selected by a vote, pending Board approval. The winning entry will become property of the JET Alumni Association of New York.
Need some inspiration? Check out the logos from other JET Alumni Associations from around the United States!
