Life as it is... living in Japan

A few months ago one of my friends challenged me to write an article on some of the similarities between Japan and Australia. Ever since then, I have been struggling to come up with a list of things that are the same. My list to date contains: girl talk, being overfed by grandmothers, the growing dependency on technology, and the cruelty of high school girls. It’s a working progress. I was trying to avoid the obvious things that come with being human, like being afraid to make mistakes, etc., but that seemed to eliminate most of my list. To be honest, after months of thinking about this, I have come to the conclusion that it still surprises me how much is different. Things that I had assumed would be the same all over the world, turned out to be completely different.  I think by this stage I could probably write an entire encyclopaedia on all the differences I have come across. I won’t bore you with the entire series, but here are a few examples to highlight the sheer variety of d...

I have just started my fifth year living and teaching in Japan, which means that I am officially a unicorn! Unicorns are the “spirit animal” of fifth year JET Programme participants. Each year has their own animal representative which is shown in the picture below. You can even get t-shirts online! Fifth year JETs are called unicorns because to other JETs, it sometimes seems like we don’t exist. Most of us don’t attend events anymore. Some of us have settled down with long term partners or children, others are more involved in the community or our hobbies. We have seen and done pretty much everything at least once. This is our everyday life, comfortable and familiar. 先月末、日本に来て 5 年目になった。やっとユニコーンになった！ JET プログラムの 5 年目の人はユニコーンと言われている。それぞれの年を表す動物がある。ネットで T シャツも買える。なぜ 5 年目がユニコーンになっているかというと、他の JET 参加者から見ると、存在していないそうだ。 5 年目のほとんどの人はイベントにあまり行かないと言われているのは事実だと思う。パートナーや子供がいる人もいる。又、日本のコミュニティの一員になっていたり、趣味がいっぱいある人もいる。それに、ほとんどのイベントに何回も参加してきたこともある。日本の生活に慣れている。 When I was a first year JET ther...