It’s been three quarters of a year since I moved to Mima city, Japan, and started working as a CIR at city hall. Summer is drawing closer, bringing some winds (or rather summery breezes) of change. For one, several English language teaching JET colleagues from Mima city are leaving, with new people coming in.

Furthermore, the city has very recently finished their brand new building, which we moved in to only about three weeks ago. Everything is very nice looking, and comfortable. Except for the fact that all desks are of a universal height, which, for your information, is set to average Japanese people, as opposed to a two meter tall foreigner (such as yours truly). My previous desk we elevated with state of the art techniques, namely placing mortar bricks underneath it. But this new desk is set in place, so for now, I’m hunching over my desk until a new, higher one will be installed next month.

This, however, is about the extent of problems here. I’m enjoying my work, I have very friendly colleagues, a very kind section chief, a very sweet supervisor, a very interested and enthusiastic mayor, and so on. As for the work itself, I’m basically given free reign in what I want to do. One part of my job is visiting schools or other groups of people and doing presentations on the Netherlands. I will introduce some of our customs and our holidays, or I’ll talk about our history in relation to Japan.

Recently, I’ve been working on collecting and editing pictures for use in said presentations. So I’ve seen plenty of old Dutch ships, tulips and windmills on my screen. I’ll be using these to make some animations about the Netherlands, about topics such as polders, and the tulip boom of the early 17th century.

Also, speaking about windmills and tulips, I recently attended the local tulip festival in Mima. Why do we have a tulip festival here, you ask? In the Meiji period, when Japan was busy westernizing itself, it brought experts in all sorts of fields to Japan to help out, among them quite a few Dutchmen. One of them was Johannis de Rijke, a civil engineer, who, among other things, helped design the harbor of Osaka, and oversaw many water management projects throughout the country. One dam was also built here, in present day Mima city, and it is the only one of its kind left in the prefecture. Next to this dam, the city constructed a small park, complete with tulips and a windmill! So every year, a small festival is held here, with lots of kids and adults joining in on the fun.

Luckily, next to my work, I’ve also made a lot of international friends during my stay here. We have a very involved community of JETs here, so there’s always something to do and someone to see, with maybe the highlight being the annual AJET Musical, which this year was in its 20th edition. I jumped off into the deep end and directed the musical, which ended up being a lot of work, but also a ton of fun, meeting and hanging out with many different people. I’ll be joining the production next year for sure!

So all in all, life here in Mima is very nice. It’s laidback, the people are warm and kind, and the work is good. It might not be a well-known place, when compared to the likes of Tokyo and Kyoto, but next time you’re in Japan, maybe come over to Mima city, and kick back!

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