This Is My Life

I live on Zamami-jima, a small island of 1000 people 30 miles west of Naha, the capital of Okinawa. Zamami is located in the Kerama Islands, a chain of about 25 islands (I say 'about' because I think that number varies with the tides). Four of the islands are inhabited and I teach on three of those. The other, Tokashiki, has a JET but is a large island, faces Naha, and has its own boat system so we have no contact with them. Okinawa is the name of our prefecture, which is similar to a US state. The Okinawan prefecture includes the mainland (Naha, the numerous US military bases, and the majority of Okinawa JETs), a couple northerly islands, the Keramas (that's me), three more islands NW of me, two islands waaay SE of the mainland, and two larger islands with 40-50,000 cities way SW of the mainland.

I teach on a three-week rotation, one week each on Zamami, Aka, and Geruma. I take a boat to Aka and Geruma. Zamami's school has about 85 students, excluding kindergarten (four-six-year-olds). Aka has 40ish students and eight in kindergarten. Geruma has 14 students and maybe six in kindergarten? Since the class sizes are so small, elementary is combined into first/second, third/fourth, and fifth/sixth. I am completely responsible for the lesson planning and teaching of those 45 minutes classes. I also accompany the [Japanese] English teacher to the junior high classes, where I range from standing idly to reading aloud or having students read to me. Even if I sleep 8.5 hours the night before, junior high classes always threaten to put me to sleep. Which will be troublesome if it ever happens because I have to stand.

I will use other posts to detail what I do on Zamami aside from teaching, but in short, I love this place. I originally didn't preference a location in Japan on my JET application, but decided during my interview (after looking at the map of Japan in the waiting room and realizing there were southerly islands) that I wanted to preference. They told me I couldn't, just as the application clearly stated in many places that I couldn't change anything after submission. But I tried anyway and my preference was accepted. I think it said something like "I want to be on a small island and I want to teach elementary." After learning of my placement, it was only gradually that I found out how lucky I was (like my predecessor writing, "you have the best JET placement in Japan"). This place is perfect for me: it has diving, Giant Trevally fishing, it's small, beautiful, I'm teaching elementary, and it has a relatively young population. And it certainly helped that so many people at the Tokyo Orientation were jealous because they had specifically requested and been denied an Okinawan placement.