The things we want

[kei_tyr]

Boston was a bit of a disaster....It's been a long weekend is all I can say. I'm tired of job hunting. I haven't really been doing it extremely but I guess doing it all at once isn't especially happy either

Comments

[wen]

for JET, for some reason they're really selective.... this was confusing to me cuz when i got there, there were sooo many crap teachers who were lazy and stuff or just weird (like all the rice-chasers... eew). its even harder for people like us who are asian- they prefer white people (seriously- my friend's jp teacher is on one of the committees and admitted it to her!) it helps a lot if you have prior teaching experience, even tutoring experience, and experience with children (i'd worked at a daycare and summer camps)
for the job search in general, your language skills can be more important than you realize- i got my current job and my gallery job before that because i'm fluent in chinese, but it was also helpful that i speak japanese (the gallery had clients in japan, and at my current work, we have a distribution center in tokyo so we're going to be having some products specifically for that market probably in the near future)
i recommend taking the japanese proficiency exam. if you look on gaijinpot.com for jobs in japan, and lot of them specify that you need to have passed the 2kyuu or 1kyuu (im planning on taking the 1kyuu next year- i forgot to sign up for this years!)
also, networking helps a LOT- i must have applied to over 50 jobs and only got maybe 5 interviews out of that. if you already know someone who works in the company, it's a lot easier to get an interview.
let me know if you have any more specific questions? we can talk more at dinner next week (are you going? i guess we're still in early planning phases lol)