Hello everyone!
My name is Zoe and I am a 2nd year CIR (Coordinator for International Relations) on the JET Programme from the UK. If you are reading this, chances are you were looking for CIR stuff in the first place.
As other CIRs will surely know, when one says they are on JET, the overwhelming majority of people automatically assume that means "English teacher", otherwise known as ALT (Assistant Language Teacher). And while 90% of the time that may be true, recent years have seen the amount of roles that the JET programme offer expand slightly, with the CIR and SEA (Sports Exchange Advisor) roles.
So how does being a CIR differ?
Well, first and foremost, you need to know how to somewhat speak Japanese. It varies by country I believe, but in the UK at least, you need JLPT N2 level at a minimum. It should be noted that while this is a requirement, there are exceptions if you have other experiences which have led to you having that level of Japanese. It must also be said that having the certification is by no means a guarantee you’ll be right for the position. As you may know the JLPT exam does not include an oral section, so many have found themselves able to read and understand at an N2 level, but unable to communicate to the same level.
Seeing as how you’ll be invited to interview and it will be in Japanese, you’ll soon see which you are.
In 2019, 5 years after graduating university with a BA in Japanese and Spanish, I decided to apply for the CIR role, having not used my spoken Japanese in at least the same amount of time. To say I crashed and burned would be an understatement. Extremely inexperienced and woefully unprepared, I clutched the paper they handed me to read with sweaty hands and stumbled, frowned, err’d and umm’d my way through 2 hours of excruciating torture in front of a panel of 4 interviewers. Only joking. It was more like 20 minutes, but when you’re not understanding much, boyyy does it feel like that much longer.
Understandably, I failed, and vowed to never again undertake such a harrowing experience.
But the following year, I was back BABY. Back in front of the same panel who had witnessed my shameful display the year before (and that takes real guts). It was the height of covid-19, so this time it was a remote interview over Teams as I sat in my living room dressed smartly from the waist up . This time, knowing what to expect and having prepared hard leading up to it, I felt more in control and sailed smoothly through it.
Sorry, that was also a lie.
While not as excruciating as the previous year, the god-awful power of nerves cannot be understated. The portion of my brain which stored the easiest kanji readings decided to go on holiday, and while the overall rate of ‘err’ing decreased, the ridiculously easy kanji that I did stumble on had my ears burning with embarrassment and destroyed my soul that much more. That being said, there must have been some improvement from the previous year as I was put on the Alternate list, a kind of hellish waiting room where nobody gets upgraded (at least, not in the UK with about only 10 CIR posts available each year) .
Despite being chuffed with that accomplishment, the true hell of Alternate is not knowing what to do with your life in the meantime. Is there any point starting this thing or that thing when you may be leaving??? (this ranges from education/work opportunities to future holidays to dating people). Also, another thing is paying for a ton of documents that you may or may not need but will definitely run out of validity juuuust in time for the next cycle – although to be fair, this has decreased somewhat with the online application system these days. Yay for PDFs!
Anyway, long story short, I was not upgraded and the following year, I found myself back online (this time Zoom, they’d apparently upgraded) to more or less the same poor panel of interviewers that had seen my mug for the past 3 years straight.
It would not be lying to say that I greeted them like old friends, asked after their kids, complimented their new haircuts, that kind of thing… (obviously, not really). But honestly, I really did recognise the panel and they me, so some of the formalities were definitely skipped a little here. Third time’s a charm people always say but for me the third time was who-even-cares-anymore-I’m-getting-old-here, and I was fully prepared to move on with my life and relegate JET as a pipe dream (see above, I had also started a few ‘somethings’ and life was comfy).
Which made it even more typical when I finally landed the position in 2022.
Ecstatic, scared, pissed off and proud of myself were just some of the feelings I felt upon receiving the news. But determined that my 3-year determination wouldn’t be for naught, I packed up my life and moved to Ibara, this small city in the Japanese countryside.
There’s plenty more before and after the move I should probably talk about but this post is long already so I’ll leave it here. What I’d like you to leave this post with is, never give up (or at least, set a future date and stick to it - mine was JET by the time I was 30). It is also never too late. Many of my peers are in their 30s and above themselves, so give it a go! You never know how things will turn out!
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