How did it all begin? Part 2!

by | Jan 8, 2018 | Immersion

Immersion plans

I joined the JET Programme in 2000 and I spent 3 years in a Taketa City, Oita Prefecture on the island of Kyushu. For my first two years on the programme I taught at 10 Elementary Schools and 4 Junior High Schools. I went to a different school every day. Then for my third year, I transferred to two high schools in the same city.

JET Programme

Me with my JET friends. All of us standing at our own flags 🙂

I absolutely loved my time there and I got involved in a number of hobbies, from a Japanese drama group:

Japanese Drama Club

To a karate group:

January Karate challenge

I made a point of using Japanese as much as possible even for taiko drumming in the community:

Iwado Daiko

Often outside of work there were times that I felt it was my job to speak to people in English and help them with their English and of course that was why I was there. However, I did get to spend a lot of my time with Japanese friends who wanted to speak in Japanese or weren’t looking to learn English. I stayed in Japan until 2005. It was taiko drumming that kept me in Japan for an extra two years after JET.

Once I was planning my return to the UK I realised that I was going to miss Japan terribly but I decided I didn’t have to lose the Japanese language that I had developed. I thought how I could make it work and then decided to pretend I was still in Japan, and that’s what it came down to. By this point I was thinking in Japanese. I had spent so much of my time living in a rural area of Japan, using Japanese every single day, so I decided to imagine that I was still in Japan whilst really in the UK.

Next time I will tell you how I did it!

Jessica Brown Nihongo Connection

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