Now that you know where you are headed to… Finding out your city/town so close to departure does happen, but according to other ALTs, the Hiroshima Board of Education is notorious for being one of the last to send out placement information (so it may not necessarily happen to you if you are a prefectural ALT). I only heard from my supervisor for the first time at the beginning of July, three weeks before departure from South Africa. I was prefectural ALT in Hiroshima, teaching senior-high school only. THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CITY/MUNICIPAL AND PREFECTURAL JETS FOUND HERE! So you may only hear from your supervisor closer to the end of June/beginning of July to find out which city/town you’ll be living in. Prefectural ALTs, on the other hand, have a bit more waiting to do as their contracting organisation – the prefecture’s Board of Education – has to decide where to place all the prefectural ALTs. It doesn’t take too long for supervisors and predecessors to make contact. Their contracting organisation is their city/town’s Board of Education (BOE). The next placement is city/municipal because the second name gives the actual location within the prefecture, and ends in -shi.Ĭity/municipal ALTs find out where in the prefecture they will live as soon as placements are released as their city or town is listed. The placement at the top of the list is prefectural because both of the names end in -ken. I have covered up the names of course, but you will be able to see the differences in the two placement types Here is a screenshot of the placement notification list I received when I was an incoming JET. If your placement does not provide a city name (no -shi), and instead repeats the prefecture’s name, for example: Hiroshima-ken (prefecture), Hiroshima-ken (city), then you are most likely a prefectural ALT and will work at senior-high schools. If your placement says, for example, Hiroshima-ken, Kure-shi, then that means (in the most likely situation) that you are a city/municipal ALT and will be working mainly at elementary and junior-high schools. When you receive your placement, there will first be the prefecture or city (ending in -ken, like Hiroshima-ken, or -to, like Tokyo-to), and the second column will say the city or town (ends in -ken, -to, or -shi, like Kure-shi). I still fondly remember that excitement of finding out my placement. This post will cover placements and predecessors, providing a bit of insight into both. Receiving your placement comes with both a sense of relief and anxiousness – as I am sure you are now thinking about the exciting adventures and challenges you may face in your new home. It’s that time of the year again when placement notifications slowly start to trickle around the world.