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That episode on "Watson" was quite amusing. But all i have to say is: go to an Onsen and all will be laid bare. Literally.

Didn't the phrase Gaijin Smash originate on outpost nine? This IS the stuff from outpost nine! <3<3 I thought it got taken down. O-O

I love Az. I attempted to talk one of my friends staying near Kyoto to get his autograph for me if they ever saw a big black guy walking around but noooope... No such luck for me.

Anyway- these are always good reads- but you must remember that they're often spun to get a laugh.

I'm SO doing the JET program once I'm out of college. The experience with the JET I met on my exchange semented it.

u.u Yes, he deserves a medal for that I think...

And he must have been in Kyoto the same time I was!

I never understood why he did that. I know he was coming back to the states in August, and his life as a Japanese teacher was over, however, I don't understand why he moved his website and slowly put the articles back up again as if it was happening all over again....

I guess it really doesn't matter. It's been my dream for the last five years to go teach in Japan under Jet. The next four years of getting my Bachelors degree, I'm going to be completely living for the day I have an interview with Jet sweatdrop

People interested should go to Big Daikon If they are interested in the lives of Japanese School teachers. I wouldn't recommend the site to younger folk.

Please take a word of advice from a girl who pinned most of her post-college hopes on getting into JET: DO NOT pin your post college hopes on getting into JET. Getting rejected from JET (and I mean I didn't even get an interview) really threw me for a loop and I was pretty depressed about it for a long time. I wanted it for a long time and I watched people who heard about it a month before deadline get in over me. Just treat it like any other job, and keep your options open.

I dunno about those conversation schools, I did a lot of research after I was rejected from JET, and I basically decided I'm better off working here and maybe going for JET again than contract myself to one of those places. Basically Japanese people come in, pay for a lesson and sit and talk English with you (with prepared lessons from the companies textbook) for an hour. You work when people are able to come in, which means evenings, Saturdays, and even a few minor holidays. The nicest thing I've heard about any of these places is that your mornings are usually free to look for a different job (NOVA definitely had the worst reputation)

But the experiences out of JET vary so much, even though it has a good reputation, what your situation will be is a roll of the dice. Someone JETs have fully funished, rent-subsudized apartments, others are stuck paying high rent and buying new funiture. Some JETs jobs consist of little more than being a "human tape recorder" and reading english all day from the book, while others practically run the class.

If you want to go to Japan for a length of time, you really should consider study abroad in college. You're in a school environment (easier to make friends), you'll probably be with a host family, you'll have lots of free time to see the sites. Money might be the issue, I didn't do study abroad because I didn't really have the money, but now that I'm graduated, I really wish I had taken the loans I needed to study at Kansai Gaidai for a semester.