I was on the news!

Here in Nara there is an organization called JETNet, that is run by JETs and organizes events for Japanese people and JETs to participate in together. Nara prefecture is the only prefecture in Japan with this program. Others have tried it, but its never worked out for some reason. 

You can read more about JETNet here, on the website:

  http://www.pref.nara.jp/bunkak/kokusai/jet-index.html

I participated in my first JETNet event a couple weeks ago. We went 'hiking' in Asuka, a little picturesque town about a 30 minutes train ride

 from Nara City. It was Japanese style hiking, so mainly on paved paths. There were about 60 JETs there and about 70 Japanese participants. It was sort of a scavenger hunt, where the path took us by many shrines, temples, and historical sites that we had to answer questions about. Some questions were in Japanese and some in English, so each team had to really work together. 

Heavy clouds hung around all morning, and as we sat eating lunch in the park about halfway through the event, the rain broke free. We all ran for shelter under a large gazebo and had to end the event early. 

All the teams were tied, so we had a big round of janken (Ro-Sham-Bo, or rock paper scissors) with representatives from each team to decide the winners. One of the young girls from our team played a good game of janken but didn't come out victorious.

After that, we all walked the 20 minutes back to the train station under umbrellas and tarps as the rain poured down on us and then parted ways and caught our trains home.

It was a lot of fun and a great way to spend time with people from the local community. The next event is in December and is Christmas themed. I'm very excited for it!!

The Asuka event was featured on the local news. Its in Japanese of course, but you can check it out here with these instructions from Marlene, our French CIR that is the Chair of JETNet currently. You can see me, in my purple sweatshirt, around 1:54 and 2:02.

"You can see it here, only with Internet Explorer: 

http://www.webtv.pref.nara.jp/

For those who are not familiarized with japanese yet: you have a big square and a lot of smaller squares down the big one. Right under the big square, the smaller one on the left which says 2009kanji10kanji17kanji, is the one that will interest you. Click on High or Low depending on your connection speed. And enjoy.

With any other browser: download it with these instructions: 
- Copy/Paste the direct link into tab or window (this one :http://www.webtv.pref.nara.jp/kensei_f/../wmv/kensei20091017h.wmv )
- Save page as...
- Got it on your computer !
- Enjoy !"