Japanese teenagers spending the week in Franklin are getting their first taste of Hoosier school cafeteria food, meeting local leaders and forming bonds with families they’re staying with.
The students from Kuji, Japan, which is Franklin’s sister city, arrived in Johnson County on Wednesday morning to be greeted by Mayor Steve Barnett. They’re in the midst of a whirlwind week that has them seeing the community, experiencing Indiana schools and making friends.
“Just to see the joy on their faces when they’re here,” Barnett said of his favorite aspect of the visit. “It’s really touching the day they leave and I’m there to see them off. Just about all the kids are in tears when they leave. They enjoy themselves, and when they leave, they have a bonding with the host families and write each other for years afterwards. It goes both ways, the American kids also cry because of that bond.”
The sister-city partnership was strengthened in 2007 when Kuji brought its first group of students to Franklin that year. Since then, 12 groups of students from Kuji have visited the community.
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The Japanese students met those American kids for the first time at Custer Baker Intermediate School. After receiving a school baseball cap and pen, they joined hundreds of Custer Baker students in the cafeteria. The children from Kuji got their first taste of Hoosier cafeteria food and introduced themselves to the Grizzly Cubs using the cafeteria microphone.
“Hello,” one said.
“Hello,” hundreds of Custer Baker students responded.
After eating, students visited classrooms. In one class, students learned about various planets in the solar system. The students from Kuji wrote the Japanese character representing each planet on the whiteboard. Others wrote their names.
Mana Komori, 14, was surprised by the outgoing nature of the students at Custer Baker.
“The students there are very friendly and very easy to talk to,” Komori said through translator Tamayo Moore. “Japanese people are a little bit more shy.”
Rikou Okami, also 14, had similar observations.
“My first impression is the people are very kind, friendly,” Okami said through Moore. “There are some custom differences, people driving on the right side, things like that.”
Custer Baker World Cultures Teacher Christa Roberts has hosted a student from Kuji each of the last seven years. She has three kids at home and this year is hosting a 14-year-old boy.
“We feed them meals outside the school day, dinners, snacks, we take them around the city, to Indianapolis, take them to buy souvenirs, to help them feel welcome in the U.S.,” Roberts said. “Being on the other side of the world is intimidating, we want to make them feel like family.”
Roberts said her kids and the Japanese kids interact mostly through games such as cards and dodgeball, as they can form a bond that transcends languages.
Kuji-Franklin goodwill ambassador Whitney Sievertson has long been interested in going to Japan and was named ambassador by the mayors of both cities in September. She raised money and traveled to Kuji and spent a month there, visiting the mayor, going to the schools and talking to Franklin College graduates who teach English there. Sievertson said she hopes to be able to raise money to fund trips for Franklin students to travel to Kuji, as they have only had one such opportunity, in 2015.
She said the Japanese companies in Franklin will be asked to contribute to a scholarship fund that would help send some residents to visit Kuji.
Roberts said if the opportunity presented itself, she would send her children to Japan.
“I would absolutely send my kids,” Roberts said. “I fully believe in the education travel provides. I don’t think you can learn those things any other way. The program has been there a long time, we have a great relationship with the city of Kuji. They would treat my kids as if they were their own.”
