A friend of mine from college once asked me if, living on my own in Japan for an extended period of time , I was more prone to think profound thoughts. Profundity-have you found it in the rice fields yet, she asked me. We had always joked about “profundity” during school , especially during the final days of my collegiate career. During that time, I found myself questioning what had I gained from my college years-writing all those papers, sitting through three-hour tests, and eating all that instant ramen? I regarded these questions as hokey and wishy-washy, the kind of questions you think about for a bit and then move on and forget about, and so I joked self-eggacingly with my friend about my search for “profundity”(which I didn’t even believe was a real word), all the while feeling uncomfortable with the answers I didn’t have.

Nevertheless, I graduated, on a hot and muggy May afternoon; I, Peter Kocheung Wong, with the degree of Bachelor of Science, with all the rights and privileges thereto pertaining.

In July 2000, two months after I graduated from college and still trying to come to terms with the fact that my days as a student were over, I moved to Japan to teach English under the Japanese Ministry of Education’s Japan Exchange and Teaching Program. In the end, I would teach under the JET Program for three years, the program maximum. And as my friend suggested, I did in fact have a lot of time to think in Japan, and though I don’t know if I ever reached profundity, my time under the JET Program was without overstatement, the most mind-blowing experience I’ve ever had.

Perhaps it was that, besides living in Hong Kong from birth until the age of two, I’d grown up in the Bay Area and never really left, not even for college. I wasn’t very well traveled, but I’d been to New York; I’d been to Las Vegas; I’d been to Tucson. Wasn’t New York just a bigger, busier version of San Francisco; Las Vegas, a gaudier, grander version of Cache Creek, the local Indian gaming casino; and Arizona but a drier, hotter San Jose? Wouldn’t Japan just be a little different, with a few more Asian people, I thought?

I’m exaggerating with the above examples, but I was definitely a dreadfully naive child before my JET experience. I understood that Japan was a different place than America (duh) but I don’t think I really understood the realities of what it meant for a place to be different, simple realities such as driving on the other side of the road or using a squat toilet. I suppose living in the same place for twenty plus years will make a person believe that different places aren’t really that different. I credit my experience on the JET Program for completely changing the way I think in that respect.

Over the course of the next few essays, I will describe the JET Program-its scope, the duties of a participant, and the application process-as well as my own experiences on the program. I don’t expect that you’ll find this series mind-blowing, but I hope you’ll be at least moderately interested.