Hi, everyone. I'm Peter Rivard. I'm 37, come from America (north of Boston), and have lived in Japan for about five and a half years now. I started out as a junior high school ALT on the JET program (3 years in Takefu-shi, Fukui-ken, which has become my furusato). Then I moved up to Fukui City to be the elementary school ALT--my job is half to teach kids, half teacher training. Fukui eventually hired four more elem. ALTs. I left the JET program but still do the same thing as an employee of the Fukui City BOE. I love the half of my job that involves dealing with kids, but I've learned a lot more about Japan from working with their teachers and fitting into a Japanese municipal government.