I’m a 1st year JET who recently got engaged to another 1st year JET living in the same prefecture, but over a 2 hour commute away. I’m an ALT and she’s a CIR, which makes a suitable placement in her (larger) city together quite difficult – especially since it’s a quite competitive city in terms of places.
I’ve already told my supervisor and the CIR at the City Hall about my intention to transfer to said bigger city, but after my fiancée researched some other possible outcomes, she found that there’s a possibility we’ll both have to be transferred to another prefecture if we’re to live together.
I’ve heard of JETs transferring to live with other JETs and being helped with their placement by CLAIR, and I’ve also heard that CLAIR will move \*both\* JETs in some cases if it’s necessary so that they can be together. Obviously it’s easier when it’s a JET marrying a non-JET because CLAIR only have to accommodate one person, so this post isn’t about that situation.
Who should I be talking to/contacting in order to make this the smoothest transition possible, both for my fiancée and I, and for the any Prefectural Offices/Boards of Education involved (especially my own since they’ve been pretty great to me)? Could anyone who’s been in or experienced the same situation please guide me on how the process will/should work and what kind of documentation and preparation it takes? If there’s a particular office/person within CLAIR that I should be contacting, could someone DM me the contact details?
Thanks in advance!
5 comments
The transfer request paperwork should get sent out in September, and the deadline is in October. Keep reminding your respective COs that you want to transfer (sometimes they assume their JET doesn’t need the information and forget, or “forget,” to pass it along).
The best person to talk to in this case would be your PA. They’ll be best able to guide you in the process.
Different prefecture, but I know a couple who did a transfer as a result of marriage. They moved one spouse to be near the other rather than moving both of them. However the spouse who relocated was placed at a school in an entirely different town an hour away. They ended up having to commute two hours round trip every day. It was especially bongers since the year they transfered there was even an open ALT position in their partner’s town.
So yeah, you might not have to both transfer, but your placement might still be dumb
How common is this that this is a question haha
This is very helpful for me. I’m an incoming ALT. Me and my fiancé applied together and requested the same preferences. We’re placed in the same region but 4 hours apart. To see each other it’ll be very expensive (around £150 for a round trip) 😢
My girlfriend and I did this. We were on two islands in Okinawa more than 500km from each other, or a flight and a ferry apart. We spoke to our respective BOE’s about getting paperwork about our intention to transfer. They gave us some paperwork which included some questions about our intentions to transfer, the reasoning behind them, and what prefectures we’d prefer. You submit your paperwork before the deadline and from there, it’s out of your hands. The only thing you have to do is, when you have the conversation in January about recontracting, by then they will have found you a replacement based on your preference.
Marriage specifically requires some evidence that you are married or that you intend to marry. In our case, both of us submitted hanko-stamped pieces of paper with two sentences saying that ‘we intend to marry on such a such a date.’ We mailed our copies to each other so that both letters were hanko stamped by each of us.
So it’s all very much a black box, but here’s what I *think* happens. You have your 3 preferences, same as you do when you first apply. First your BOE talks to your prefecture, who sends out word to other BOE’s within the prefecture looking for one that has openings for two ALTs. If none can be found, then they start looking outside the prefecture. This is where your preferences come in. We chose Nagasaki, Kyoto and Sendai (iirc) and Nagasaki responded to us saying they had room for 2 ALTs. Since they were our first preference, CLAIR considered the matter resolved and within a couple of months we were in contact with our new placement.
It’s been pretty smooth since then. Our BOE’s have to talk to each other about the logistics of moving us (They arrange the flights, we take care of our luggage n shit.) We’re due to move at the beginning of August.