So, what exactly IS the JET Program(me)

So, what exactly IS the JET Program(me)? I can hear you wondering. Well, JET stands for Japan Exchange and Teaching Program(me). It is Japan’s answer to internationalisation (a buzz word to be found in every newspaper and TV article at the moment). Other countries send their students abroad to experience different cultures. Japan brings young foreigners (generally aged between 21 and 35) into the country in an attempt to teach its people about life outside the archipelago. It meets with varying degrees of success.

Most JET program(me) participants work as either ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers) or as CIRs (Counsellor for International Relations). ALTs can work in communities as small as 600 people, or in the big cities like Tokyo or Sapporo. CIRs almost always work in a city. Recently some SEAs (Sports Education Advisers) have also been added to the program(me). ALTs have the pleasure of ‘team teaching’ with Japanese Teachers of English, or JTEs. Follow this link for a more positive view of being an ALT.

By far the most numerous and vociferous participants on the programme are the citizens of the United States of America. In his 1983 version of ‘The Japanese Mind’, Robert C. Christopher suggests that the Japanese feel both guilt and gratitude to the Americans for dealing with them so humanely after the end of World War Two. Had Japan and Germany been the victors of that conflict, it is unlikely that they would have dealt quite so humanely with the vanquished.

As a result of this mingled guilt and gratitude, Japan now imitates America just as two thousand years ago she imitated China. Many are the non-American JETs who fume silently when asked to pronounce words in an American accent ‘because Japanese learn American English’.  

The second largest group of JET programme participants are the British. The Japanese have a quaint idea of what constitutes British life. They think we still all sit around at 4 pm drinking ‘milk tea’ and munching on cucumber sandwiches. On Sundays we go to church at least once. We all live in huge houses with big gardens. We all have a BBC Home Counties accent. And we all LOVE the Royal Family, Margaret Thatcher, and America…!

 The other nationalities on the programme include Irish, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Canadians, Israelis, Indonesians… the list goes on.

In general, JET participants are well-treated by their host institutions. But to take this assessment at face value is to ignore several factors. For example, no matter how long we stay in Japan, we will always be thought of as ‘gaijin’, or 'people from outside'. We can never become citizens of this country. Even second and third generation Koreans, who were born in Japan, still have to register as an alien at the local town or city hall. When foreigners arrive in Japan, we have to go through a fingerprinting process akin to that of registering as a criminal. TV dramas consistently show foreigners as being a bad influence on the purity of the Japanese. 

Other JET sites which will give you information about the ‘real’ JET programme – as opposed to the rather frothy one that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs concocts.