Getting preferred placement.

28 comments

1. It would depend who you ask. But I think the general consensus is that its somewhat random. Some get lucky and get their preferences, while some requested Hokkaido and got an island in Okinawa.

   If you’re going to apply, I think its best to prepare for the worst, and not expect to get your desired placement.

2. There is no gurantee that anyone would get there preferred placement, rural or urban. It’s pretty much up to CLAIR (the organization that runs the JET programme) and what the contracting organizations want. I didn’t get any of my 3 preferences. Some people will get a placement they put in their preference, some won’t. Some will want rural but get Tokyo and vice versa.

   So, what I’m trying to say is expect the unexpected.

3. There is no guarantee of any placement. I didn’t get any of mine. That’s okay.

   If you must be in the city, you can always apply then complete your contract then get a job in the big city.

4. Yep, I didn’t list Tokyo (I picked Koshigaya, Hokkaido and Kochi) and I got placed in Tokyo.
   Some other things that affect your placement might be a combination of – sister city ties (if you have any), ongoing medical conditions, your work experience and what the CO and BOE request. Usually your placement should be a Venn diagram of all these things but then it can be pretty random like throwing darts on the board and left up to the cosmos.

5. If an urban placement is really important to you, I would avoid JET unfortunately. While many people get big cities, many do not. Placement requests are not often honored(unless it’s for something important like health issues/family). I requested a prefecture that’s not usually requested by others and still got placed in a rural town nowhere near it lol

6. The only constant I’ve noticed from other jet placements are sister city ties as someone else mentioned. Otherwise you are playing the lottery and the chances of you landing in Tokyo are slim. However, there are plenty of other decently sized cities in this country, try seeing if one is your sister city.

7. The JET application is kind of a mystery box, nobody really knows the weights of anything taken into account. We assume the statement and the interview are most important, so we don’t know if they actually try to get us where we ask at all, or if it’s just the last thing on the list and a ‘maybe’ option if there’s multiple placements that we suit. In my opinion I don’t think the requests are taken very seriously, and I think that’s fair enough. It’s a pretty gigantic task sorting ALTs out and that would just make it even harder. Also, many people haven’t been to Japan before and are largely picking something famous or random anyway.

   There’s an assumption that more people ask for Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, so you’ll be less likely to get those, but in reality, nobody knows at all, as we don’t know how much they take requests into consideration at all…

   I’ll echo what’s already been said in this thread, if you’re happy with *anywhere*, apply. If you will reject if you don’t get somewhere specific, try a different route.

8. Unlikely to be placed in a major city but it’s not impossible.

9. I got my requests due to a medical condition.

   Kyushu was my third choice.

   Urban due to medical reasons.

   High school due to lack of Japanese and teaching experience.

   Can’t conplain

10. Think about it: how many people put Tokyo and Osaka down as their first choice(s)?

    It’s all down to whether the stars are right when it comes to the only two “major cities” placement that everyone knows.

    Now if you request something a little out of way like Fukuoka, Sendai, or Hiroshima, that’s probably a little bit more likely.

11. they throw a dart with your name on at a map of japan and wherever it lands, you get! the amount of people ive met who got hokkaido but requested tokyo or got tokyo and requested hokkaido is beyond a joke lol. may the odds be ever in your favour my friend. I requested Hyogo and got Hokkaido!

12. There is some good info here but I think I can clarify a bit on the process and give some actual numbers.

    Placements requests are considered a suggestion on where you want to go. JET functions as a placement agency and connects you to a Contracting Organization (CO for short). Generally the needs of the CO override the desires of the applicant. There is a story I heard as a JET of a person who trained as a Buddhist monk of a very specific sect. He applied to the program requesting a rural placement but when placements come out he was given Tokyo. It turns out that the only school in Japan that teaches his sect of Buddhism had an opening and he was the perfect candidate for the spot. Since high schools in Japan tend to be career focused instead of only general education, the needs of the CO are important and usually dictate where someone goes. With that said, if you fall into a general category and there are placements available where you requested there is a decent chance you will get what you want.

    Onto the numbers!

    These numbers come from 2019, which was the last year we had actual data from Clair. [Source]( http://jetprogramme.org/wp-content/MAIN-PAGE/intro/participating/2019_jetstats_e.pdf)

    City | Number of JETs
    :–|–:
    Tokyo | 450
    Sopporo | 42
    Sendai | 66
    Yokohama | 0
    Kawasaki0 | 1
    Nagoya | 1
    Kyoto | 63
    Kobe | 127
    Hiroshima | 2
    Kitakyushu | 17
    Fukuoka | 0
    Chiba | 1
    Saitama | 3
    Shizuoka | 32
    Saki | 2
    Niigata | 24
    Hamamatsu | 22
    Okayama | 3
    Sagamihara | 1
    Kumamoto | 58

    In total there were 915 jets contracted with major cities, that are considered separate COs from their prefectures, and a total of 5761 JETs in the program in 2019. That makes it 915 of 5761JETS who were placed in urban placements.

    There are a few important notes that you need to know and understand:

    -not all major cities use JET to fulfill their English education requirements. Some of them use other companies like Interac or hire native English speakers who are already in Japan, aka direct hire.

    -high-school placements are generally handled by prefectures so the numbers may not reflect actual feet on the ground and may be higher than reported. Each city may handle their system differently.

    -many placements exist just outside of major cities. This means you may end up in a satellite town of a major city. Not guarantees but they do exist.

    -I’m sure there is more I could add but I think you get the idea.

13. I asked for Hokkaido – was sent exact opposite southward to Nagasaki lol

14. Ask for an island and got an island

15. Asked for a rural placement on x island, got a rural placement on x island.

16. I think people can only really speak anecdotally. I put Kyushu as my preferred area and that’s where I got placed, so no complaints there. But my friend also put Kyushu and she’s in Hokkaido. It’s an mixed bag

17. I’m an incoming JET and I asked for urban Saitama and Tokyo as my top picks. I’m headed to a small rural city in Yamaguchi (the kind of place where trains run every hour or two and end at 8pm). I imagine a lot of factors are considered though. I drive, speak okay Japanese and have lived in Japan for a period of time before so I expected somewhere a bit quieter. Must say I’ve seen a good few people get placed in Tokyo. Although I have a few medical conditions so I did expect somewhere less isolated, but I think it’s a great thing to be able to go somewhere less well known and experience a ‘normal’ lifestyle

18. Top 3 choices: Chiba, Okayama, and Kagawa. Got Okayama. I asked for sunshine and art culture. And I definitely got what I asked for

19. Top 3 choice: Fukuoka, Kyoto, Sapporo. I had heard that the top 3 choices weren’t accounted for at all, so I took the approach of putting them all over the map so I could show how flexible I was and hopefully getting brownie points for that. Lo and behold I ended up in Fukuoka! That’s how I accidentally got my first choice which wasn’t actually my first choice. I ended up absolutely loving my time there, though.

20. Incoming Jet. I left the Placement Request section totally blank on the application (I was okay with anywhere) and I ended up in Kobe. No sure how I got it, but I’m super happy with it!

21. I asked for an urban placement and put three cities as my preference (Kyoto, Chiba, Saitama) in that order. I got Kobe, which is in the Kansai area, so pretty damn close to Kyoto. AFAIK, preferences are taken into account but nothing is guaranteed.

    If you want a big city, put them down as your preferences – if the city you live in is twinned with a city in Japan and you think you might want to live there, mention that as I’ve heard it helps.

22. I requested urban and picked Tokyo, Aichi and Yamanashi because I was hoping for central Honshu and ended up in rural Hokkaido. Didn’t get placed anywhere near my requests. Didn’t even get a small city, but I ultimately didn’t care where I went in the end.

23. My pred requested Okinawa and got placed in Hokkaido. If your interested in JET, I would say only apply if you’re ultimately ok with going anywhere. It’s fine to have preferences, but at the end of the day placements are pretty random and you have to be ok with potentially getting the exact opposite of what you want.

    If you want to be more particular about location, your best bet is to go with a ALT dispatch company

24. Don’t know if it’s just a really big coincidence but myself and two others I know requested Tokyo, Yokohama and Saitama, all of us then being placed in Tokyo.

    It’s probably just chance but don’t know if the emphasis on Kanto influenced the placement decisions at all.

25. My situation was funny…I asked for urban and got placed in one of the most isolated rural placements (nearest train station an hour away, etc…)

    Despite it being super rural though, it actually had very easy road access to Tokyo and since I drove, I could get down to Tokyo/Yokohama basically every weekend.

26. Incoming JET ~ Asked for Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo and I ended up with Tokyo.

    At my interview, they asked me before we even started what kind of placement I would prefer just so they could write it down and I said urban because I lived in rural parts on and off and I’m over it. Not sure how much of that contributed, but I got what I wanted so there’s that

27. It doesn’t really have an effect on where you get placed, unless there’s a very compelling reason (which is typically just being close to resident family/spouses; or a need to be near a particular specialised medical resource). COs state their preferences for what kind of JET they want, and candidates get allocated based on that.

    However, this process is extremely opaque and no-one really ever knows the reason they get a particular placement. In some cases – for example if you’re a science graduate – you can assume that it’s the reason you might be placed in a science-focused school; but that doesn’t explain why you’re in a science-focused school in Nara or Shimane or Osaka.

    Probability states that some number of JETs every year will be placed somewhere that they said was their preference. And because the placement process is so opaque, those JETs might think therefore that they were placed there *because* they listed it as a preference. It’s impossible to prove a counter-factual – whether they’d be placed there if they’d written different preferences – but the fact that:

    A) JET can do matchmaking, as shown by their ability to send JETs with very specific characteristics (eg. nationality, gender, academic background, sister city status); and yet
    B) Most JETs don’t get their placement preferences unless there are compelling reasons.

    …suggests that our preferences aren’t taken into account. Loads of JETs request Tokyo and don’t get placed there; loads of JETs *don’t* request Tokyo and still get placed there.

28. Ahhhh okay. I guess it’s really hit or miss with placements. Thanks for all the comments!!!!