Monterey Bay: The Magazine of CSU Monterey Bay Fall/Winter 2013, Vol. VI, No. II | Page 18

Alumni

JET Set
Exchange program sends CSUMB graduates to Japan

“ was excited to live
I
in Kagoshima because
Salinas’ sister city,
Ichikiushikino, is also
in Kagoshima...”
September 2011 to August 2012.
He describes his new home as
“really small. Like, really really
small. There are a lot of fields,
and a lot of bugs.”
The goal of the JET program is to promote mutual
understanding between nations.
Participants work either as
language teachers in schools or
in cultural relations roles at local
government offices. The initial
placement is for one year, though
it can be renewed for up to five

years. Placements are competitive – the program accepts just
a third of those who apply, with
about 4,300 total participants
from 45 countries.
“In the Japanese Language and Culture program at
CSUMB, we are fortunate to
be able to send 66 percent or
more of our applicants to the
JET program every year,” said
Dr. Shigeko Sekine, associate
professor in the School of World
Languages and Cultures.
Julia Caron ’08 spent two
years in the program following
her graduation from the World
Languages and Cultures program
with an emphasis in Japanese.
“Studying Japanese at CSUMB
made my life in Japan a lot easier.
I already had basic [language]
skills to build upon. Professors Yoshiko Saito-Abbott and
Shigeko Sekine really helped me
gain a greater understanding of
the culture behind the language,
which made acclimating a lot
easier,” said Caron.
Caron grew up in Salinas.
During her time in JET, she lived
in the city of Hioki in Kagoshima prefecture.
“I was excited to live in
Kagoshima because Salinas’ sister
city, Ichikiushikino, is also in
Kagoshima and I’d been there
before on a student exchange in
high school,” she said.
Caron developed a passion
for Japanese dance and music while abroad. She took up
the shinobue, a Japanese flute,
and shamisen, a three-stringed

instrument similar to a banjo,
as well as a form of dance called
Nihon-buyo.
Upon her return to the
United States, she attended
graduate school at the Monterey
Institute of International Studies. She earned her master’s in
international policy studies with
concentrations in conflict resolution and Japanese in 2012.
“I benefitted a lot from JET.
It gave me the confidence to
continue my education,” Caron
said. “It was fun to interact with
the students and I was satisfied
to find that I really helped some
students become interested in
studying English.”
– Liz MacDonald

CSUMB alumnus
Salvador Nada (third
from left, back row)
with other participants
in the Japanese Exchange
and Teaching Program.

Itakuura-Machi
Tokyo

Hioki

Provided

I

n August, six graduates from
the Japanese Language and
Culture program headed
overseas as participants in the
Japanese Exchange and Teaching
program, better known as JET.
Salinas native Salvador Nava
’13 was among them. He went
to the town of Itakuura-Machi,
located in the Gunma province,
where he is teaching English to
Japanese schoolchildren and serving as a bridge between Japanese
and American cultures. This
rural experience is a bit different from the last time he lived
in Japan. Nava studied abroad at
Toyo University in Tokyo from