Job Discussion Forums

[ipsa]

Does anyone know who to contact when applying to Jet if you are already in Japan? (Have been here one month)

[Celeste]

Unfortunately, you will have to apply to the embassy or consulate back in your home country. JET does not hire from within Japan. A friend of mine (now a JET ALT) was working in Tokyo in 2001/2002. She had someone from the embassy in her home country mail her all of the application stuff to her Tokyo address, but when it came time for the interview, she had to fly all the way back to her country for it. (She told me she spent 10 hours on the plane, stayed one night, had her interview, got back on the plane and made the 10 hour flight back to Tokyo all at her own exspense. If she hadn't gotten the job, she would have been really upset.) When she got the job, there was a lot of confusion because she was already in the country. Some bureaucrats were trying to tell her that she would have to fly back to her home country(at her own expense) and then be flown to Tokyo (at the expense of JET). Fortunately someone grabbed a brain and decided that she could just meet with the other JETs at the hotel-Which she had to stay at even though she had an apartment in Tokyo (no hardship there, it was a really nice hotel!) but because she hadn't flown in, no one had arranged a roommate for her, so she had to stay in a room by herself (poor baby).

So, if you are really confident that you will make the JET programme, go for it! I think that the applications for 2004 will probably be available around October 2003. Call the embassy in your home country to see about getting one. If you don't want to gamblee on the cost of a plane ticket home, thenyou might want to try working for Altia, or another agency that supplies ALTs to schools around Japan.

[Glenski]