September 2006 - August 2007

My gap year was provided by Project Trust, a UK based charity that sends 17-18 year old students all over the world on amazing gap years. If you’re in the UK (or Holland) and are interested, I cannot push you enough to at least go and try the selection course - it’s great fun and at that point has no strings attached. But I guarantee by then you’ll want to go abroad anyway!

Project Trust sends volunteers out in groups of two, my partner for the year was Matt. We stayed in a small apartment in the Kita-Ku prefecture, close to Junten High School, the school where I was an English Language Assistant. We taught full time with another native English teacher, as well as providing support to older students to prepare them for their exams.

Taken from Project Trust’s information about the Junten project;

A busy and varied schedule characterizes the work at this project which is based in a district of Tokyo known as Oji. Volunteers are hosted by Junten High School, a large and well established, mixed secondary school. Their main role is to work in a team-teaching capacity as English conversation assistants. In addition to this they are involved in other activities such as giving English classes to local office workers and members of the PTA, running an international club, Japanese lessons, helping at a kindergarten and learning sign language at a deaf club. It is therefore not long before they start to make many Japanese friends amongst such a broad spectrum of people.

Tokyo itself is an incredible city to spend a year in and a city of vast proportions with a population of almost 12 million. Though dominated by valleys of neon, the busiest stations in the world and towering sky scrapers there is so much more to the city than this and always somewhere new to explore. Volunteers find themselves feeling very much a part of their community in Oji and stay in a well-equipped Japanese style flat within walking distance of the school.

The project was a great success, I had a wonderful time and this year set the foundation for my university course. If you’re interested in hearing more from volunteers, the two new volunteers both have blogs. (Ben & Mike).