Most of the time, working as an Assistant English Teacher was fun (or a 'blast', as my American cousins would say).

However, my position was very different from that of most JET programme participants.

So, what does a JET Programme ALT do anyway (official version)?

Most JETs get to stay in one school, or visit maybe two or three. As I was employed by the Hokkaido Prefectural Board of Education (and Hokkaido is renowned throughout the rest of Japan for being less stuffy and traditional, but also less advanced, than the rest of Japan), I visited ten senior high schools across the district. The schools ranged from academic (the kind we're shown on TV in the West by the well-meaning Japanese PR machine) through commercial, technical, agricultural, specialised (in my case nursing, but occasionally schools for the handicapped - whether politically correct or not, this is how the Japanese translates), to 'general'. There was only one school that I physically dreaded going to. If you want to see how hard JET programme participants have to work, then follow this link.

 Living in Japan is a rewarding experience, overall; but like many other JET programme participants, it was sometimes very difficult for me not to be cynical about the programme itself. For those of us who were serious about teaching (I had the intention of completing a PGCE graduate teaching certificate in modern foreign language teaching on my return to the UK) job satisfaction was sometimes a little thin on the ground.

Being a slightly older JET (I was 26 when I started on the programme) was also interesting, as the majority of JETs were 3-5 years younger than this. Perhaps because of the fact the majority of JETs were on the younger side of 25, there was also a general lack of awareness on the part of some of the Japanese teachers of English that in our home countries some of us had had pretty responsible jobs.

About the only people unaware of the fact that the 'Let's bring Gaikokuland [Foreigners and their countries] into our country' programme was not working were the members of the Japanese government. Amongst the programme participants themselves, too, there was, and still is, resentment about the unevenness of the perqs that JETs enjoy.

One of the biggest gripes is that some ALTs do not have to work or attend their school for the whole school holidays, which amount to about 3 months a year. This is in addition to the 20 days of paid leave that all JETs enjoy. Meanwhile, other ALTs have to sit in the Board of Education clock-watching, studying Japanese, writing letters, composing home pages, playing solitaire, and climbing the walls in their frustration at being underutilised.

 In a year I saw perhaps 3000 high school students, aged between 16 to 18. Students in Japan are very young, both physically and mentally, compared to their counterparts in the West who attend 11-16 or 11-18 schools. Teaching students of this age is akin to teaching 13 to 15 year olds in the UK. I had to 'team teach', an intriguing concept, with about 30 different teachers in one year.

I had good relationships with some teachers. The others were very good for my character building. The teachers stayed at the same school every day, whereas I was always the 'special guest'. The teachers saw me, generally, as an entertainer. ALTs are, in the eyes of many JTEs, generic, not individual, and this is particularly the case for the one-shot.

This was particularly apparent at some schools which I visited in my second year, where, when I was shown into the principal's office for the obligatory green tea and sweet bean paste filled cake they did not remember that I had in fact visited the school a year earlier.

 Many of the schools I visited were in locations where there were also town ALTs. However, in a bureaucratic twist worthy of the UK, the town ALTs are not allowed to visit the senior high schools as the senior high schools are funded differently from the junior high schools, where the town ALTs generally work.

In my host city of Iwamizawa, there were four of the biggest and best schools in the Sorachi district. One of these high schools was run by the city, and has its own ALT. The other three were run by the district, and were visited once a year.

 I spent a lot of time giving my self-introduction, so that for a long time I practically said in my sleep, "Hello. My name is Paula Younger. I come from Newcastle in England. Here is a map of England..." and so on. Thanks to the direct translation method employed in Japanese classrooms, not to mention the JTEs insistence that 'Oh, English is so difficult for we Japanese' (with which I sympathised, as Japanese was just about impossible for this Englishwoman!), there were many students who couldn't even understand my self-introduction.

The rest of my time was spent model reading, listening to pair practices, or, on occasions, listening to conversations such as 'Do you have a pet', 'How old are you', 'Where is your hometown'. For some reason, Japanese students had the biggest problems with the question 'Where do you live.' Until the universities change their entrance examinations to include (wait for it!) oral communication, the efforts of ALTs are largely wasted.

 However, some of the nicest things that happened to me as an ALT include:

 After 15 months, I came to the conclusion that the following skills are indispensable to a smooth time as an ALT in Japan.

* And for Non-US JETS only - ability to speak in a West-Coast American accent. This will save time when you are asked if you could say that in an American accent please. To this day I still roll my 'r' when I speak. In my defence I did do my best to introduce my students to (more or less) standard Received Pronunication British English (you know, the variety the BBC used to use before they decided regional accents were a good idea and proceeded to employ half of Scotland's newsreaders). *|*