4 Tips for Acing the JET Programme Interview

The JET Programme will be your golden ticket to Japan for many of you who want to live in Japan. It offers a very reasonable salary, 20 paid days off a year, and total immersion in a country that fascinates many.
For me, the JET Programme looked like an English teaching job that wasn’t a scam amongst the sea of suspicious-looking ads. I didn’t have much interest in Japan specifically, but now I’m in my 4th year here and I absolutely adore this volcano-covered island chain, with all its weird and wonderful quirks.
I originally applied to the JET programme in 2017 and was accepted then. Unfortunately, due to personal circumstances, I had to turn down the job offer. But in 2018 I reapplied and was accepted again. I don’t mean to sound like a big dog, but I’m probably one of only a few people to have done the JET interview twice and been approved both times. That leads me to today’s post, 4 tips on how to nail the JET interview.
1. Show You Won’t Jump Ship
Hiring a new ALT on the JET Programme is quite a financial commitment for the Japanese government. Rather generously, the government pays for your flight over to Japan, training, and setting you up with all the essentials of daily life, not to mention all the extra resources you’re offered by your individual Board of Education. If you stay longer, you make all that time, money and effort invested by your contracting organization worthwhile.
With that in mind, the main thing you should be conveying in your JET interview is, “I will stay in Japan for a while”. How can you do that? Prove that you don’t just love Japan for its pop culture. Show that you have experience living a long way from home, or that you have a hobby that you’re keen to pursue in Japan that might lead to you forming a strong group of friends. I remember one interviewer went off on a speech about how he had a rugby team that got him through his time, before asking me, “…so what hobbies do you think you have that’ll get you through?” I answered my love for music would do that, and lo and behold it has. I’ve managed to worm my way into the music scene in my city, performing on the regular with my Japanese mates and having many a fun night out.
In both of my JET interviews I was asked, “What experience do you have living abroad?” and “How do you think you’ll overcome culture shock?”, so it’s obviously a priority that they take on people that are likely to stay long term.
One mistake I think a lot of people make is thinking a love for anime/manga is enough to get you through your time here. It’s a big part of the culture here, but it’s certainly not going to make you want to stay long-term. Show you can cope with living a long way from home for other reasons.

BBC News - Mar 28
A university student in Japan has dressed up as Volodymyr Zelensky for his graduation ceremony.

newsonjapan.com - Mar 26
EurekaMag digitizes scientific journal articles and book chapters in European libraries since 2007. It serves its customer base in Japan with European literature particularly in the fields of medical and zoological sciences.

Biographics - Mar 24
Allied propaganda posters during World War II frequently featured the characters of the three axis leaders: the German one with the moustache, the big jawed Italian and the stern bespect Japanese General.

NOJ / TV Asahi - Mar 23
Tokyo's Keisen Jogakuen has announced that it will stop recruiting undergraduate and graduate students from 2024 onwards.

60 Minutes Australia - Mar 20
It sounds completely crazy, but in Japan it is actually legal to kidnap children.

Japan Times - Mar 19
Spending an hour or more in front of digital devices each day has a more limited effect on 2-year-olds’ growth and development than previously thought, a recent study by Japanese researchers has shown, providing fresh insight into the possible risks of the use of digital devices on toddlers.

TabiEats - Mar 18
A list of our top 10 useful phrases that you should know before coming to Japan.

Nikkei - Mar 18
The Japanese government has set a target of having 400,000 foreign students studying in the country by 2033, hoping to encourage them to work in the country after they graduate.

TV Asahi News / NOJ - Mar 17
Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology notified boards of education nationwide on Friday that it is basically unnecessary to wear a mask as a countermeasure against COVID in schools from the new semester.

60 Minutes Australia - Mar 17
Exposing the strange law that allows children to be legally kidnapped. Australians torn apart by the way Japanese society deals with disputed divorce cases and battles over child custody.

Unseen Japan - Mar 17
"Mama" and "papa" are such ubiquitous parental terms in Japan that it's easy to forget they're foreign words - words the Japanese government once tried to ban.

TV Asahi News - Mar 16
The popularity of "manga artists" and "scholars" soared this year in a survey of "what you want to be when you grow up?"

Al Jazeera - Mar 16
This Japanese artist has a mission to revive Okinawa’s Indigenous body art tradition called hajichi.

jdsupra.com - Mar 16
In what has been deemed a rare and landmark case, Japanese labor authorities have recognized Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) harassment as a work-related disease eligible for workers’ compensation benefits for the first time.

Kyodo - Mar 14
The number of women committing suicide in Japan increased for the third straight year in 2022, rising 67 from the previous year to 7,135, government data showed Tuesday, with the upward trend apparently fueled by the coronavirus pandemic.

jobsinjapan.com - Mar 14
In this article I’ll tell you the 4 tips I used to pass the Jet Programme interview not once but twice!