ON THE ROAD: PROFILES
Hersha Guron
Niimi, Japan
I met Hersha in Niimi, a small town of population 30,000 in Japan’s Okayama Prefecture.
“I started learning Japanese in middle school by myself. In high school, I took lessons, and that’s where I learned about the JET program. When I took up Science in college, I realized I wasn’t very good at it, but I was very good at Japanese. So I signed up for the JET program and got a job offer pretty early. I had good Japanese skills, prior teaching experience, and didn’t care where I was placed. That’s how I found myself in Niimi.”
“This is my second year here, but I’m leaving in August. I like being a teacher, but I don’t want to be a teacher full-time. I do like the system here, as it's a lot like my past teaching experience, where you get to teach outdoors a lot. I'm not sure I have all the theoretical stuff down, though, so I'm not sure I'd be very good at it long-term. Plus, when I first got here, Japan was a unique thing to me. Now, it’s become a place where I stay. I used to think, ‘Wow, this is the air of Japan!” or “Vending machines are so cool!” but now everything is becoming more and more normal.”
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, the vending machines are still super cool! But the air is just air. I do want to stay in Japan after I leave Niimi, though. I’m looking for jobs here, mostly in the cities.”
“I really like the Japanese countryside. I’m from Minnesota, but I was this weirdo in high school, when my dream was to settle down in the Japanese countryside and be an old lady by myself. I was thinking Hokkaido to begin with, but now that I’ve been here a while, the thought of being an elderly woman by myself in an uninsulated Japanese apartment? Uhh, no thank you. I think I’ll at least need to get really rich first.”
“I like that Niimi is surrounded by mountains. The weather changes so easily. This morning, the mountains were covered in fog, and now the sky is clear. I like this time of the year. The kids are out for spring break, and it’s starting to warm up.”
“Recently, I’ve also become more interested in going back to India. I haven’t been back in 12 years, and I don’t know any of the languages. I really only know Japanese, which is quite an affront to my family (laughs). My family is from Punjab, and my mom was thinking about taking me there after the JET program is up, sort of in between my jobs. She might not get any time off though, so we'll see...”