Two months after my acceptance to the JET Program, I received the email I had been eagerly awaiting. This single email would determine almost everything about my daily life in Japan. Of course, I’m talking about my placement results.

The JET Program sends its participants to schools and communities across Japan, and that decision-making process from the applicant’s perspective is essentially no different than putting a few scraps of information into a black box and waiting for a result to pop out seven or eight months later. In other words, assigning thousands of placements to incoming JETs is a long and difficult process that, unfortunately, we as individuals have little say in.

The information given by applicants which may or may not hold any weight in the decision-making process consists of four questions on the application form and some potential interview questions (although I personally didn’t get any of these).

The application form questions are:

1. Do you prefer a placement in an Urban or Rural Area or no preference?
2. List your top 3 placement requests with a short reason why you chose each.
3. Do you have a driver’s license?
4. Do you feel comfortable using public transportation?

The first two questions are pretty self-explanatory, and the third and fourth questions are essentially verifying whether you’ll be able to get around in rural and/or urban areas. If you answer that you’re comfortable on public transportation, they know they can send you to a big city, although there’s still a good chance they won’t. If you answer that you have a driver’s license, they can and may very well send you to the side of a mountain where over 5 miles (8km) of steep, winding roads separate you and the nearest grocery store.

So there I was, staring at my inbox with a feeling of nervous excitement that just wouldn’t settle down. The possibilities rushed through my head: maybe I would be headed to a cute town in Gifu Prefecture where I had requested, or perhaps they would send me to the snow-covered northern regions of Hokkaido or Tohoku. I braced myself and clicked. Immediately all the excitement left my body. Tokushima Prefecture… Where is that one again? I thought to myself. I quickly opened up a map of Japan in another tab and scrolled over the area I thought Tokushima would be in. Nothing. What was I missing, I had studied all the prefectures of Japan before so why didn’t I know where Tokushima was? Then I realized I was looking at the wrong Island.

The Japanese mainland consists of four large Islands: Hokkaido in the north, Honshu which is the largest island with most of the big cities, Kyushu in the southwest, and the smallest island, Shikoku, is to the south of Honshu and east of Kyushu. Tokushima Prefecture is in the east of Shikoku and is home to one of the most remote areas on Japan’s mainland. This place, known as the Iya River Valley, also happens to be my placement location.

My first impressions after doing some research were 1: it’s a little generous to call this place a valley, and 2: what an incredible spot to be placed in. The place where I grew up in America is often referred to as “the river valley” by locals and yet it couldn’t be more different a place from the so-called “Iya River Valley”. My impression of a river valley growing up was a place with a wide, powerful river surrounded by acres of flat, fertile farmland with such a gradual slope up to the surrounding higher elevation areas that someone standing on the riverbank might not realize they are in a valley at all. The Iya Valley on the other hand, may be more aptly described as a gorge, ravine, or mountain stream running through the tiny gaps between the towering, forested peaks that consume the surrounding landscape as far as the eye can see. People do farm in the Iya Valley but do so on slopes of up to 40 degrees, and the larger region known as Nishi-Awa is recognized as a globally important agricultural heritage site for its history of steep slope farming. Japan is one of the youngest landmasses on Earth and erosion there has only just started to level out the bumpy mountains that cover over 75% of the country. Consequently, perhaps the concept of a “river valley” may also differ between cultures and lands at such different points along their geological timelines.

All this to say, although my JET placement initially came as a shock to me, I couldn’t be more excited about the place I’m going and I truly believe I would feel this way no matter what placement I received. Every piece of land and every community has its own history, culture, and ecosystem. Every land has its own tragedy and its own beauty. It’s up to us as JETs to perceive these aspects of our communities and to discover a new way of life that connects us to our environments that are both so different and yet not quite so different to the places we come from.