April

Jonah Asher at Aranami.net writes about Japan's annual season of new beginnings.

I always hear about all of these foreigners in Japan with teaching jobs or on the JET Program and how they have all of this time. Their jobs are so easy, they get to go home early and when they aren't teaching a class they can pretty much sit around and do nothing. Part of my job is teaching, but another part of it has been the building of sratch of a website for the Board of Education of my town, doing most of the IT work around my office, translating documents, coordinating events with the town's sister city and going to lots of meetings.

I have heard that coming to Japan to teach English can be frustrating and often a big disappointment, but I pity the fool who can go home early and … pretty much sit around and do nothing. I am not the world's most social animal, but I think you have to be engaged in your community, work, friends, family for your stay in Japan (or anywhere else, even home) to mean anything. I envy Jonah his challenging work.

April is moving season here in Japan. Most things in Japan, such as the school year and work rotation schedules, run on the same year as the fiscal year here in Japan, which ends at the end of March and begins at the beginning of April.

One small correction: Japanese school year etc. do not end but start every April, ending in March of the following year. The correspondence of these social and cultural cycles with the fiscal year of some organizations (there are also organizations that use the calendar year as their fiscal year) is just a coincidence: The April-March annual cycle is actually a holdover from the time when Japan used a lunisolar calendar (pre-1873) and correspond to the Chinese or Lunar New Year. Also, while most companies tend to hire a freshman class of new employees each April, office transfers can and do happen any time.

Tomomi moved into an apartment that is subsidized by her town, and these are called "danchi" in Japanese. They are basically subsidized housing but aren't just for people with low incomes. Usually they are giving out to city employees, teachers and so on to make their job more comfortable and attractive (low or free rent is always good). […] It's got three bedrooms, a nice big bathroom and even a little yard out front.

We lived in a SHATAKU, basically a DANCHI for employees of some private company, for our first ten years here in Japan. We are definitely of the take-the-subsidized-apartment-and-save-up-for-something-better school. I will likely make many posts on the subject of Japanese housing eventually, but Jonah's description is accurate. However, keep in mind that Japanese apartments and houses are almost universally tiny by US standards. The three-bedroom apartment Jonah mentions is probably fine as a single's pad, but that's the size of apartment more usually assigned to a family of four or five people.