"JET Will Make All Attempts To Honor An Applicant's Placement Request..."

Though I found out I had been accepted into the JET Program over a month ago, only with a definite placement do I feel I can now legitimately start a JET-related blog.

The other day I checked my email, and wedged between 'Bullshit' and 'I don't want to deal with this' was a more intriguing email, with the subject line "JET Program Placement".

'Wow! So early!', I thought. I wondered which of my placement requests I would get, or get near to. For the record, I requested Shizuoka, Niigata, and Osaka.

I opened the email, aaaaannd...

Motherfucking Okinawa.

Clearly the good people at JET make every attempt to honor participants' location requests.

I have spent the past four years in New Orleans (with a semester in Singapore), all I wanted was a place with four distinct seasons, instead I'm getting more of the same.

Plus, let us not forget that Okinawa is about as Japanese as Hawaii is American--which is to say not at all. I'm so far from Japan; geographically and culturally.

But after all of this raced through my mind, I took a breath and realized, "Holy shit, I'm going to spend the next year (possibly more) on a tropical island."

And that's probably nothing to complain about.