Its summertime again, which for ALTs usually means lots of time sitting around at your desk not really doing much of anything… Unless you’re on the MAJET Communications Team, that is!

This summer, we’ve been working hard to update the website with new and refreshed content to make it your best source of information on all things Miyazaki! It is still very much a work in progress, so we apologize for the mess. However, there are a few things we’ve finished that we wanted to share with you!

The Look

First and foremost, our veteran JETs and longtime residents may have noticed that our website now has a new look! We felt it was time for a little change of format, and our new website theme will allow us to make the site easier to navigate and more user-friendly. Most notably, we’ve broken down a lot of our content into smaller, more manageable chunks so you don’t have to go hunting through long articles to find the information you want.

Emergency Procedures

Rainy season is over, but September brings the typhoon season with it, and you can never be too prepared should an earthquake strike! Check out our Emergency Procedures section to learn all about how to prepare for natural disasters and what to do should you find yourself caught in one. One of our best features is the Miyazaki Prefecture Emergency Evacuation Sites map. This is a Google map showing every single evacuation site in the prefecture. For those of you who are new to the area, this is a great resource to familiarize yourself with the evacuation points in your town.

A new addition to the Emergency Procedures page is the Guide to Road Conditions. After earthquakes or in times of heavy rain, road closures can be sudden and unexpected. If you find yourself needing to get out of the house despite the weather, this is a great resource to help you plan a safe route. You can also check here for general construction projects to help you avoid those long, slow, annoying routes.

Festivals and Events

While not a new addition to the site, we’ve been doing some reorganizing in this area to help make things easier for you to navigate. We’ve also updated the 2016 MAJET Events Schedule. We haven’t settled on what all of the events for the year will be, but there’s a few on there to get yourselves psyched up for. 😉 Lastly, we’ve updated the Events in Miyazaki Google Calendar with all sorts of events for the month of August. If you know of anything we haven’t added, please feel free to send the info our way!

One of our future goals is to do a write-up of all the major festivals in Miyazaki. It will take us some time to get around to it ourselves, but if anyone wants to submit a write-up of their own, we’d be more than happy to feature it on the site! Feel free to send us your write-up at miyazakiajet@gmail.com.

Ongoing Projects

In addition to the topics above, we’ve also been working on a major revamp of the Exploring Miyazaki section. Our goal is to give you as much information about each area as we can, from places to eat and where to work out to sightseeing and extracurricular activities. This project has been slow-going as it requires a lot of research on our part, often in Japanese. It can be a bit difficult to write about areas we don’t actually live in, as well, so any suggestions from locals are always appreciated!

Recommendation Submissions

Lastly, we really want the website to be a community endeavor. In other words, we want your ideas! If you have a favorite place to eat, know a really great doctor, or discovered a little-known nook that you’d like to share with the community, please fill out the form below and tell us all about it!

That’s all for now!

Keep an eye out for future updates.