A month into the new year and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s already almost time to bid farewell to your students. 3 nensei have their graduation ceremony in late February and most ALTs will wrap up their lessons before the month\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s end. Similar to your students making it through their elementary, junior, and high school careers, you too will have made it through the Japanese school year (and winter) alive. And what awaits you at the end of this accomplishment? The answer is one of the most pleasant and beautiful seasons Japan has to offer. Yet, before we get too far ahead of ourselves and start planning our hanami trips, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s soak up the last of the winter activities before they disappear for another nine months.<\/p>\n
Looking to hit the slopes one last time before all the snow melts away? Join the HAJET Ski Trip as we head to northern Hyogo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Ojiro village, known for being one of Japan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most beautiful, on Feb 28 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Mar 1, with an optional day on Mar 2. If those dates don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work for you there is always the WhyNot!? Ski\/Board Trip in Nagano from Mar 6 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Mar 8 (you can often get a discount when signing up if you let them know you are a JET). If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had enough of snow sports perhaps you can find a last minute spot for Hokkaido\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s famous Yuki Matsuri, where I definitely recommend stopping by the Sapporo Brewery and Genghis Khan Restaurant to devour all the beer and lamb you want for 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
If snow’s not your thing maybe an abundance of flesh wrapped in thin loin clothes fits your style. The festival known as Hadaka Matsuri, or more familiar to foreigners as the Naked Man Festival, is held in a number of locations throughout Japan with the most famous being at Saidaiji Temple in Okayama. Luckily Okayama AJET has created an event that consistently receives the National AJET award for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Best Interprefectural Event\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to provide an amazing experience for anyone wanting to attend this wild night. This year, Okayama AJET\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s event will run from Feb 21 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Feb 22.<\/p>\n
If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather skip the cold all together, cuddle up under the kotatsu and read this short month\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s short issue. Ryan gives us a preview of what to expect from Kobe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s day long rock event, Punkspring. Brittany and Louie share their escape from the cold with their respective travel reviews on Malaysia and Thailand and a JET alum tells us what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great about living in Kagawa Prefecture. Of course, there are our normal sections with tons of new information and Scott, well, being Scott. Since we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re stuck with the winter weather we might as well make the most of the season.<\/p>\n
Back to the classroom, I hope you can find ways to make your last lessons of the school year leave a strong impression for your students (check out Pete\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s PR message for some ideas). Even if most of our lessons have completely flopped or we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve convinced ourselves that our students will never learn English, keep in mind that as long as you were diligent in teaching the importance of knowing another language you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve most likely had an impact on a handful of students. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to think that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll simply be another ALT lost in the continuous revolving door of JET, what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s harder is to believe that as you did your best you influenced the students and people around you to discover and engage themselves in the world around them. As a friend once said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Know there was something that, and something that I left behind\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6Leave something to remember, so they won’t forget.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sean<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A month into the new year and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s already almost time to bid farewell to your students. 3 nensei have their graduation ceremony in late February and most ALTs will wrap up their lessons before the month\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s end. Similar to your students making it through their elementary, junior, and high school careers, you too will…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":4815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false},"categories":[420,278],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/sean-and-3-nensei.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4851"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}