Mie

Well, it may be time for me to admit that I am bad at being a "blogger." I have a blog, yes. I've had many. But I have never been a "blogger" in that I rarely keep up with blogs or post on them. I've found them mostly useful when traveling abroad and trying to relay my experiences to friends and family back home.

Which brings us to the present. In my last post, which I believe was written sometime in the first Bush administration, I said that I had been accepted into the JET program but that I didn't know where in Japan I'd be living.

This week, the Portland Consulate sent out placements. All I know now is that I'm going to Mie-ken, ken pretty much meaning state. I knew next to nothing about Mie before Monday's e-mail, but now I've learned a bit more. (click on the map to see a larger version.) It's a fairly rural state, the largest city hosting no more than a few hundred thousand people or so. Depending on where one is placed in the prefecture, you could be quite close to Nagoya in neighboring Aichi. In all, Mie is kind of in the middle of Osaka/Nara, Kyoto, and Nagoya, but it's shape means that you could be farther from one of these well-known places.

Word on the JET web forums is that because I was only told a state, I'm likely headed for a senior high school in a yet-to-be-named town (could be another month before said town/city/rice field is announced to me). I'm really hoping for something kind of close to Nagoya, both because I have friends in that area and because I prefer an urban setting. But my attitude the whole time is that I'd just make the most of any placement. Even if I'm isolated a bit within Mie, I believe that it will not be too difficult to reach the city now and then. After all, when you consider that some people are on far-flung islands closer to Pusan, South Korea than a major Japanese island, my central location on the main island of Honshu is pretty solid.

To each his own, though.

I've begun collecting information about Mie and the JET program there. Here are a few key links:

A guide to Mie

A homepage for Mie JETs

Wikipedia's Mie entry

So with all of that info I've learned much more about the state, but without knowing which city will be my home, or which (and how many) schools will be my workplace, I cannot start the obligatory expectation-development stage. Pity.

On the other front -- that is, the academic one -- things are going pretty well. Which is important, not just in the traditional sense. If I fail to graduate in June, I am kicked out of JET program and cannot even reapply until a year has passed. Yikes!

But right now, after some time with a helpful GPA calculator on the OSU Web site, things are looking solid.

And to bookend the post, regarding my lack of blogging, I hearby pledge to blog with a greater frequency once I get to Japan. Early on posts may be light, but once I settle in and have high-speed net access at home, it'l be smooth-sailing. I like to keep my blog readers happy. All four of them.