Getting to Japan

We knew that we were going to make this trip as early as last fall. When we moved to Portland last August, it was under the assumption that I would get into JET or be awarded a Fulbright Grant and we would be off to Japan on someone else's dime.

Well, Fulbright didn't work out.. and I am on the alternate list for JET, but that also doesn't look too good. Most people would have told us to wait and reapply to more programs next year. But we decided that we would rather go to Japan with a little bit of money, and try our luck at making our dream come true~ I hope that our blog will inspire others to do the same.

During the month of May, we traveled back to the midwest to visit some friends and family and to move our junk out of our parents houses. It was while we there that we realized we couldn't wait on JET, and I started applying to almost every school and Eikaiwa I could find. At the end of the month, we headed back to Portland, and I still hadn't heard back from any schools. While we were at the airport, Dan said something about how we should just hop on a plane and go straight to Japan. Obviously, we didn't do that.. but we did do some research and within a few days of our return to Portland, we booked our tickets to Japan. It took us a little while to realize we could do this on our own, but now that we have, we are completely going for it.

Couchsurfing is an amazing resource, and hopefully it will really help us out during our travels. It definitely has in the US. Last year we couchsurfed all the way from New Jersey to Portland and we met tons of great people. So far, I haven't had much luck getting us hosted in Japan.. but I think Dan has made some good progress. I think we have 3 weeks of our first month in Japan taken care of. I'm really hoping we will find jobs and be able to get our own place before the first month is up. But if we don't find a job during that first month in Tokyo, we plan on checking out other cities, so that will be a lot of fun too!