After a brief and unspectacular transit at Hong Kong airport...
the group of 31 South Africans arrived at Narita airport, just outside Tokyo. Here we were greeted by airport staff that asked us cordially whether we were with the JET programme, as our name badges implied. We seemed to be given some degree of preferential treatment and we were ushered through customs with the minimum amount of fuss. Once turned over the the real Japanese populace, (as opposed to the less regular airport variety) we were greeted by a multitude (and I mean a lot!) of JET representatives that politely and quite efficiently ushered us towards the buses that were to transport us to the Keio Plaza Hotel; the massive 40+ story, 5-star hotel at which we were to stay for our 3 nights in Tokyo.
Please see my blog called Touch Down in Tokyo for the details of our first night in Tokyo.
During the 2 day orientation, there was little time to do anything other than attend the organised events, unless you took the time and went AWOL during the conference... which I think many people did. Since I have no teaching background, and because I'm generally a conscientious person, I tried to maximise this opportunity to learn about my new work environment, so I attended as many seminars as I could. But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself...
The format of the orientation was basically divided into 2 days; morning, afternoons and evenings.
The morning slots contained presentations relevant to everyone. The afternoon slots consisted of a selection of seminars from which you could choose a subset to attend. The evening slots were, at least for the South African's, for scheduled social events.
The morning sessions were quite good and quite relevant, although at times a little repetitive. This is not surprising considering the number of people presenting, from both the Japanese and expatriate communities. Off the top of my head, the morning seminars consisted of a formal opening ceremony which I'll describe in a bit more detail below, an introduction to the purpose of the JET Programme and our role as teachers and catalysts of cultural exchange as well as an introduction to a brief description of the role of the ALT in Elementary, Junior High and Senior High School.
The afternoon workshops we attended on the first day were on Technology in the Classroom which was very disappointing (because the gist of the message was "face it, all you're gonna get is a blackboard."), a seminar on how the JET opportunity can be used as the springboard to a career in education, and I can't even remember the other topics...
On the second day we attended the seminars on teaching methods (which was very well presented and worth attending) and getting your Japanese driver's license, presented by one of the cutest (in a Thumper-from-Bambi kinda way), most adorable woman I've ever seen. The information presented here was also quite relevant, and the cute-factor caused me to enjoy this seminar possibly more than it was worth.
One of the evenings was used to host a semi-formal social which provided an opportunity to get to know the people from our newly designated prefectures. The hitherto (yes, it's a word) unmentioned timeslots of the orientation will covered in the highlights below.
So in retrospect would I have gone AWOL on some of the seminars? No, I probably still wouldn't because you don't have foreknowledge on which seminars are going to prove to be useful.
Highlights
Some of my highlights of the Tokyo Orientation were:- A super-super formal opening ceremony which was attended by various Japanese ministers of government. These people were clearly very important because each minster was let to his/her seat by their own personal usher whose sole responsibility seemed to me to make sure the minister knew at any point in time, simply by looking at them which seat was for them. The ceremony was very solemn but also very interesting because it was probably the first demonstration of Japanese formal custom that many of us had ever seen first hand.
- The ambassadorial function hosted by the South African Embassy was awesome. It was really a networking and marketing session, but the staff were excellent and the ambassador herself was the image of African sophistication in a typically down-to-earth way. I really enjoyed her company, and the people that attended the meeting were people worth chatting to. I found at the end of the evening that I hadn't had time to eat properly because there were too many interesting people to talk to. :)
- I even enjoyed making time in the evenings to explore Tokyo until it felt like my feet were going to explode!
- One of the highlights of going to the orientation for me was arriving for breakfast each morning and joining a bunch of South African's that spontaneously met to have breakfast before dispersing for the rest of their days. This familiarity was welcome in our new alien worlds, and I hope it helped to solidify the newly formed relationships between the members of the South African delegation. And as an added benefit, it made me feel very patriotic and proud as well :).
- After the South African ambassadorial cocktail party (on the last night of our stay) my wife and I went for the most expensive iced coffee we've ever had (R115 each) at the top (43rd floor) of the Main tower of the Keio Plaza Hotel with a bunch of South Africans for a multiracial talk on race and other things. To discuss race is typically South African, but to discuss it openly with a multiracial constituency is far less typical. The conversation was thought provoking and frank, and I left the conversation feeling like it was one of the kinds of conversations that South Africa desperately needs in order to bring healing and understanding to South Africa's diverse population.
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| A picture taken from the top of the Main Tower of the Keio Plaza Hotel |
That was the end of the last night of Tokyo...
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