Bonds Form Quickly Between Host Families And Japanese Students

Cultural diversity came to North Pines Junior High during spring break.

Twenty-three North Pines students and their families hosted Japanese exchange students for a week. Dozens of other exchange students, most of them seventh- and eighth-graders, stayed with students from other schools, including Mountain View Middle School, Centennial Middle School, St. John Vianney School and Canfield Middle School in Hayden Lake, Idaho.

Most of the Japanese students had one or two years of English. They read English better than they speak it.

So, some families experienced a bit of cultural confusion.

Mary Delateur, whose son Tony is a seventh-grader at St. John Vianney, said they thought their guest, 13-year-old Hidetaka Ogawa was going to have his birthday. His form, after all, showed his birth date as “4-1-83.”

“They sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him on the bus,” Delateur said.

Hidetaka didn’t react. It took a bit of detective work to discover that the Japanese follow the European system of listing first the date, then the month and year. Hidetaka’s birthday was actually Jan. 4.

One activity planned for the Japanese visitors also offered the American hosts a glimpse of another culture.

A family of Colville Indians traveled to North Pines for a performance of Native American dancing. Americans and Japanese alike watched, entranced, as the children did their fancy dances and the women did a jingle dance.

Despite the lack of easy spoken communication, a few things came through loud and clear.

The Japanese students had a passion for things American. Linda Ehry, whose son Nick is a sixth-grader at North Pines, said they offered their guest half a dozen typical American activities to choose from.

“He wanted to go shopping,” Ehry said. Naoki Ito, 13, was dubbed ‘The Converse Boy’ in the Ehry household, because of his love for American clothes and shoes, particularly those made by Converse.

But most of all, the hosts were struck by how quickly a bond grew between them and their guests. “I would call it the experience of a lifetime,” Ehry said.

When the travelers bid farewell to their hosts Wednesday evening, there were tears all around - even the boys, said organizer Cindy Guenther.

“Oh, boy, was it ever sad,” she said. “On the bus, the kids were just crying and waving.”

The bottom line for Guenther, though, was the chance to widen the horizons for a group of Spokane Valley children.

“If they can get a taste of what the rest of the world is like,” she said, “They get more accepting of other cultures.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo