JET Streams – Autumn 2016

Being a participant on the JET Programme is an incredible and fantastic time, but then comes the time when one has to consider: what to do after JET?

In recent years, CLAIR has provided support for post-JET life through the After JET conferences (AJC), where final-year JET participants can receive career advice and mentoring from JET alumni from different industries and occupations. I myself participated in the 2016 AJC in Chiba as an advisor on IT careers. Frequently running at the same time, the JET Programme Career Fair gives JET participants a chance to speak to and network with potential employers and recruiters from local companies in Japan. And recently, CLAIR has started yet another method for career development: the JET Internship Programme.

The internship lasts 5 days, has a choice of either an August or September placement, and is unpaid. The criteria for suitable candidates are very selective, being open only to 3rd year and above JET participants, with a JLPT Level N2 and above required (considering all the application forms are in Japanese only). Candidates are usually recommended by their contracting organisation as being suitable for consideration. Successful candidates are determined by CLAIR, who also try to match them to the workplace that best fits them, with consideration given to the requests of the companies. Joshua Leong (Kagoshima-ken CIR) was one of the selected participants who participated in the August internship period. The application and selection process, by comparison to the JET Programme (which can take almost 5 months), can be very quick, starting from early June, with successful applicants notified in late July – meaning Joshua had to scramble to book travel and accommodation for a week in Tokyo near summer peak season, even before he knew where exactly he was placed. Luckily, the commute wasn’t a problem with Tokyo’s legendary and extensive rail network.

Apart from the information pack that interns get detailing who the contact would be at the placement and what the intern would be doing, details weren’t particularly specific, and while Joshua knew he was placed with a foreign technology consultancy, “consulting”, as Joshua points out, can cover a whole range of things. Fortunately, the placement turned out to be a very good match. Describing the company as having ‘a very progressive work culture which I really enjoyed’, he also got to go with company representatives to meetings with clients. ‘It wasn’t as if they were holding my hand… I got to do actual work’, which included writing reports based on the client meetings he was part of and doing market research for projects that were in the planning stages. ‘I felt I was contributing to the workplace – that was very positive… I would consider working at [this type of company] after JET’.

Interestingly, while obviously Japanese is important and used for business and client interactions, English was frequently used internally in the company. Though a CIR, Joshua noted that dealing with Japanese business language and IT jargon could be challenging in comparison to the Japanese used in public service. Sometimes it would require writing an unfamiliar word down phonetically, to be later looked up and corrected back in the office.

Joshua goes on to describe the workplace as one that was highly diverse, with people from different nationalities, including Japanese. It was a far more relaxed workplace – initially, Joshua was relatively traditional in his work habits. He discussed the merits of a more flexible work environment with several work colleagues – interestingly, the Japanese nationals who worked there all had experience working overseas and thus had exposure to an international work environment (it should be noted that there has been a public service push by the government to change the traditional Japanese work culture).

In terms of how the internship influenced his after JET career plans, Joshua says that it was good to get a taste of both the public and private sectors. The experience with this private sector job was extremely positive, and certainly something he would aim for as a place to work at after JET. Additionally, the internship has ‘taught me that it’s very valuable to get yourself out there and network with people’ – which of course means keeping in touch with the people at the place that he interned.

If you’ve become interested in participating in the programme yourself, check out the JET Internship Programme website, and more importantly, make sure your contact information with CLAIR is up-to-date. The programme is quite new and developing, so positive support and feedback will ensure that it continues and expand to provide more opportunities for JETs in the years to come.

More information about the Internship Programme may be found here.

The audio version of my discussion with Joshua about his internship will be available soon on the After JET podcast, available on Soundcloud:

Xingmin Ji, Former Yamaguchi Prefecture CIR　2013-2014

Regardless of whether we lived in Kumamoto or elsewhere, we, the JET alumni of China, possess a shared experience: all of us have lived in Japan, and we will certainly not forget the extraordinary lives we led there.

When news of the Kumamoto Earthquake reached China, the JET alumni scattered around the various regions of China began talking with each other on WeChat, with many agreeing ‘We should definitely do something (in response to the earthquake)’. What could we do for our friends right across the sea from us? I myself wanted to travel directly to the affected areas and participate in the recovery efforts as a volunteer, but faced with various other obligations, I had no choice but to forgo traveling to Kumamoto. However, after thinking about the matter further, I resolved to start a fund-raising campaign, and so formed a fund-raising campaign team with a group of other alumni.

China is a vast country with JET alumni tending to spread out to the various regions of China upon returning home after their term of appointment on JET. How to get the word out about this fund-raising effort and how to collect or transfer the donation money were both great concerns. How to deliver our support to the disaster affected areas was also a difficult problem we faced.

Fortunately for us, the world of online services and electronic payment systems have expanded significantly in China. Such convenient services were unthinkable a decade or so ago, but now mainstream apps like WeChat and Alipay (an online payment application) exist and were helpful in solving our problems.

After forming our fund-raising team, we divided the work of making posters, handouts, etc., and did all that we could to spread the word about our campaign by sharing and forwarding emails, WeChat messages, and by talking about the fund-raising effort on Tencent QQ chat groups.

To be honest, for many of the JET alumni in China, it has been many years since they participated in the Programme; getting in contact with these alumni is quite difficult. In addition, the alumni are scattered all over China, so I did not really know what to expect when we started the campaign. Fortunately, despite my concerns, the response to our efforts moved us again and again. A senpai alumnus who participated in the Programme in 1992, over 24 years ago, sent a donation. In addition, we received donations from alumni living in a wide variety of regions – Bejing, Shanghai, Xi’an, Lanzhou, Yunnan, Shangdong, Heilong Jiang, and even Tokyo and Singapore. One household in Shanghai even contacted us, asking ‘We aren’t JET participants or alumni but can we still donate?’. Yet another person sent a donation from faraway Sri Lanka. In moments like this, I became so overwhelmed with emotion that I was at a loss for words and struggled to hold back tears.

Only one week after starting our campaign, we already had 119 donors contributing 25,000 yuan (approximately 420,000 Japanese yen). While only a small contribution, we hope it will be cherished by those affected by the disaster as an “expression of our love” from China.

Having differences in our governments and being geographically distant from each other…these are things that divide us from country to country. However, compassion between humans is something that can overcome any difference between our countries, any difference in our language, and can reach across any mountain or sea that separates us to bring us together.

As time goes on, there will probably be less and less news about the earthquake. However, we will always be looking out for and cheering on our Japanese friends across the sea from here in China. Ganbare, Kumamoto!