I finally decided.

In my constant search for a way to go to Japan for as little money as possible, I finally found the ultimate occasion. A few weeks ago I discovered that a cultural association from the Japanese community of Milan was searching for young Italian (or Italian speaking) youngsters to send to japan for a cultural exchange program. The offer is more than interesting : they pay for plane tickets, do the administrative jobs for me (like visas), give me a room to sleep and provide a little monthly allowance.
Ok where is the catch? well their initial Japanese culture stage is quite complicated. I’ll have to go to Fukui and stay there for 4 months inside a full-time pension named the Eiheiji. There, from what I understood, I’ll study culture and Japanese languages in a super-intensive course. Then I’ll be sent somewhere around Japan in there branch offices where I’ll have some part-times occupations but I’ll still have time to do something on the side, from what I could understand from their badly translated pamphlet. In total it’s a 1 years contract, that I can extend if I want to. In the end it looks like a minor clone of the JET program … with less high school girls to teach your languages to.
I went to the reunion, I didn’t understand a lot of things, but the food was okay and there was some sake tasting too. Funny enough they had a monk come too and do a little speech. Here is his picture.
At the reunion I could speak to some alumni, strangely enough, more than a couple looked at my head and told me something like : “Too bad, I really like your hairs …” which is quite hard to answer with a : “euuuh … well .. thank you?”

The organizations is called SCSP … which stand for the Soto-shu Culture Study Program. Everyone told me that the first four month are a bit though as the place I’m going is pretty much isolated and that I’ll have really long lessons.
I asked around and I’ve a good chance to get accepted as they have more places than candidates. I think I’ll give it a try.

What do you think?