When I was ten years old I had social studies lessons for the first time. For one year an enthusiastic young teacher taught us a people; Inuit of the Arctic, a place; New York City, a nation; Japan. I remember being amazed by the everyday life of a boy named Taro, who took a train to and from school and ate rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
When I was eleven years old I went to a ukiyo-e exhibition. I thought they were fantastic.
So at age thirteen, I chose to study Japanese as my foreign language. I learnt to read and write hiragana, katakana, and about 100 kanji over three years with NZ teachers. I had a five-minute interview test with a Japanese man one time. At age sixteen I quit Japanese. I felt that I would never use the language.
In 1989 I spent a year in Thailand as an exchange student. This experience taught me that I could survive all of the stages of culture shock.
In 1993 I graduated from Auckland University with a degree in psychology. I started to look for a job in sales or education. My mother showed me an advertisement she had found in the newspaper. It was for the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) programme. It is a Japanese government scheme that has brought to Japan 57000 people from 54 countries since it started in 1987. Airfares to and from Japan are paid for by the Japanese government. These people mainly work as assistant language teachers at elementary, junior, or high schools for one to five years. I went to the information meeting, submitted numerous forms, attended an interview, and was accepted for the programme. I arrived in Japan at midnight on July 25th 1993. On my first day I made a good friend; Chris Creighton.
In conclusion, my childhood memories of learning about Japan gave me an inclination, a year in Thailand gave me cross-cultural experience and confidence, and the Japanese government gave me the opportunity to live and work in Japan.
