[samurai007]

As the others said, adaptability and taking things in stride with a sense of humor will be very important.

I was on JET for 2 years, as my sig says. Each situation is different... you'll hear that so often they made an acronym out of it: ESID. While some seemed like a little better deal than others, every placement had its positives and negatives. For instance, my apartment was just a 5 minute walk to either the train station or my base school, which made things very easy. But I got no help on rent, the apartment was tiny, and the train to Osaka rumbled by, shaking the whole building, every 20-30 minutes from 5 AM till midnight. The teachers at my schools were generally very nice and eager to work with me, and the kids really seemed to like me, but the school required me to come to work even during summer vacation unless I used my vacation days (and they wouldn't let me use my vacation days during the school year, just on holidays.)

Overall, I loved my time in Japan, and remember it fondly to this day, 10 years later!

I think you'll have a pretty good chance of getting something at least near those requests. They are not the common requests (Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto), so you'll have a better shot at them. I requested the Kansai area (Specifically Nara, Kyoto, and Osaka), and I was put in Wakayama-ken, less than an hour by train to Osaka, a bit more to Nara. Not bad at all.