{"id":279,"date":"2008-09-24T20:25:23","date_gmt":"2008-09-24T20:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=279"},"modified":"2008-09-28T03:31:39","modified_gmt":"2008-09-28T03:31:39","slug":"scary","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/library\/anecdote-articles\/scary\/","title":{"rendered":"Scary"},"content":{"rendered":"
SCARIEST MOMENTS ON THE JET PROGRAM<\/span><\/div>\n

(Summer 2004 Issue)<\/span><\/p>\n

We had a lot of fun, confusing, and bizarre experiences while we were living in Japan.\u00a0 But what was your scariest experience on the
JET Progam? <\/span>
<\/span>
Some of our fellow alums recount their moments of fear. <\/span><\/p>\n

Getting appendicitis and having an operation in a Japanese hospital! Being told by a Dr. in Japanese that i would have to
\nstay in the hospital for a week and have my appendix removed while not fully aware of what he was saying, at the same
\ntime thinking that i couldn’t possibly be translating his comments correctly because there was no way that I could be that
\nseriously ill.\u00a0 I hadn’t ever been in a US hospital, so everything about the experience was new to me.\u00a0 Listening to all of the
\nJapanese was surreal, but when they called my supervisor and he translated for me, the first English words he spoke
\nwere, “I am very worried about you”.\u00a0 Scariest moment hands down!<\/p>\n

********************<\/span><\/div>\n

Getting pulled over by Police on a drunk driving sting in ‘Bonenkai season<\/span>‘ and managing to get by with just a warning (the
\nold trick about sucking on a penny before taking a breathalizer test seemed to work…but the wait was excruciatingly
\nnerve-wracking!!!)<\/p>\n

********************<\/span><\/div>\n

Living in Iwate prefecture, one is used to driving in snow, but the night my car slid backwards back down a narrow road (is
\nthere any other kind in Japan?) with a 30-foot drop into a gateball court on the one side was one of the heart-stopping
\nmoments of my JET experience.\u00a0 Lucky for me, the car slid and spun and back into the ditch on the other side of the road.<\/p>\n

********************<\/span><\/div>\n

Hitching a speedboat ride back to the mainland from some Japanese folks we met on the beach on a holiday island
\nseemed like a good idea at the time…until we realized – speeding and careening wildly across the water and narrowing
\nmissing other boats – that our jovial, driver was pretty much bombed out of his mind.\u00a0 Didn’t help that he kept turning
\naround and talking and joking with us when he should have been watching where we were going.\u00a0 That was kind of scary.<\/p>\n

********************<\/span><\/div>\n

I met the kucho<\/span> of the ku<\/span> where I lived, and when I told him that I snowboarded a lot, he said “Oh, that’s great! My
\ndaughter wants to learn to snowboard. I’ll introduce you.”\u00a0 I smiled and said “Great!” while thinking “Holy ****, I don’t want
\nto be responsible when your daughter breaks her arm on her first day on a board.”\u00a0 Fortunately, he forgot about it by the
\nend of the evening…<\/p>\n

********************<\/span><\/div>\n

When I was on the bus, on the way from Tokyo orientation to my new “home” in Gunma-ken, I was called to the front by
\nthe CIR. She said she had to tell me something before I got to my town.\u00a0 Apparently, my predecessor had died in my
\napartment. One month into her time in JET, she was found dead, in the apartment, on the futon. The cause of death was
\nnever discovered.\u00a0 No one had removed any of her stuff from the apartment (apart from the fateful futon) or from the desk
\nat school. I saw photos of her and she looked kind of like me. And, I discovered that I had worked with her brother in the
\nProsecutor’s Office in Seattle a couple years before.\u00a0 For most of my first year there, when people learned that I was living
\nin that town, they said, “Oh, so YOU’RE the one who got assigned that town…”<\/p>\n

********************<\/span><\/div>\n

When I made a boy cry. I had a coalition of genki<\/span> boys who followed me around the school, taking turns yelling “I amu <\/span>
curazy boy<\/span>!” in the hallway. One afternoon I was teaching in a san-nen-sei<\/span> class where the baddest ass of that group
\nruled, and he just wouldn’t be quiet. I told him to shut up in English, then Japanese. (My JTE, as usual, did nothing.) He
\nwas insistent in his curazy<\/span> boy-ness. Finally, in frustration, I called him a hen-jin<\/span>. The class actually applauded. The boy
\nresponded by throwing a pencil at me, then bursting into tears: This tall, spiky-haired bad ass was crying. The JTE took
\nhim outside, and I continued with a silent class. When I got home that day I cried myself.<\/p>\n

********************<\/span><\/div>\n

My scariest JET moment was when I was hit by a car while riding my bike.\u00a0 The car clipped my back tire and the bike
\ncollapsed under me, with my knee at a weird angle under the bike.\u00a0 The scary part was trying to get help.\u00a0 I didn’t speak
\nJapanese and most of the Japanese people I ran into didn’t speak English, so they didn’t help me out.\u00a0 I had to drag me
\nand my bike probably half a mile to the closest hospital.\u00a0 When I actually got to the hospital, I didn’t know how to ask for
\nhelp.\u00a0 I stood around for a few minutes until I got lucky and ran into a German lady who spoke English and Japanese and
\nshe was able to translate to the doctors.<\/p>\n

********************<\/span><\/div>\n

I was living in Kyoto for a month during the summer and going to Kyoto International school of languages.\u00a0 One night, I
\nwas out really late with a bunch of friends -until about four- and felt it safe enough to make a short walk to Kyoto eki<\/span> after
\nseparating from my friends. Sure enough, as I turned the corner, there was a buck naked Japanese man flogging the log
\non my behalf in a closed store front. I was so shocked, I didn\u2019t know what to do , so I just ran away as fast as I could. As I
\ntried to flag down a cab, I noticed the motherfucker coming at me on a bike!!! Yeah, my guy friends I told the next day
\nseemed to find it rather funny, and I\u2019m sure it does sound kinda funny from a guy’s perspective, but I can assure you it’s a
\nreally violating act!<\/p>\n

********************<\/span><\/div>\n

At one of my schools there was a notoriously xenophobic teacher who came up to me one day with a huge smile on his
\nface and said ” I heard there was a massacre at an American school in Colorado!”\u00a0 It was the day that Colombine
\nhappened and to this day, I can still remember the insult to injury that asshole brought.<\/p>\n

********************<\/span><\/div>\n

I travelled to the Beppu Prefecture one weekend and I was in a popular onsen<\/span> town there.\u00a0 I hunted for a particular onsen <\/span>
\nand when I arrived, there was no kanji<\/span> for men or women on the door.\u00a0 I peeked around the doorway and the onsen<\/span> was
\nright there so I thought I might be at a co-ed one.\u00a0 I didn’t really want to take my chances, so I began to walk away.\u00a0 Before
\nI could, a man comes to the door with only an onsen towel around his waist and a camera in his hand.\u00a0 He asked me to
\ntake a picture of him in front of the onsen.\u00a0 As I was getting ready to take the picture, the man takes the onsen towel that
\nwas wrapped around his waist and ties it around his forehead and poses for the picture.\u00a0 Yes, I found myself taking a
\npicture of a very naked man.\u00a0 I was so surprised that I think I broke his disposible camera!<\/p>\n

********************<\/span><\/div>\n

About five days before I was due to leave for Japan I had a dream in which a friend of mine from college dropped me off
\nat my new apartment in Japan (which I of course had never seen.)\u00a0 My friend said goodbye and left me in my apartment
\nall alone and I was freaked out because I didn\u2019t know what to do next.\u00a0 After I got to Japan, the board of ed people took
\nme to lunch and then dropped me off at my apartment with no further instructions.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know any Japanese, I didn\u2019t
\nknow where the heck I was and I had no idea how to use any of the appliances in my apartment.\u00a0 It was just like the
\ndream.\u00a0 I just sat there freaked out thinking what the heck do I do now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCARIEST MOMENTS ON THE JET PROGRAM (Summer 2004 Issue) We had a lot of fun, confusing, and bizarre experiences while we were living in Japan.\u00a0 But what was your scariest experience on the JET Progam? Some of our fellow alums recount their moments of fear. Getting appendicitis and having an operation in a Japanese hospital! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":70,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-279","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/PkZ7m-4v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":574,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/279\/revisions\/574"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}