Scott Swanson
Sweet Home High School’s Josai Japanese exchange program appears to be back on track after visits from an immigration official and, last week, from three representatives of Josai University High School in Tokyo.
Vice Principal Terataka Kato, English teacher Hiroko Yoshida and Roger Robinson, a faculty member who is American, visited Sweet Home Oct. 2-4 to talk with local school officials and tour the campus.
Their visit came after the 30-year string of Josai students spending a year at Sweet Home High School came to an abrupt halt because paperwork had not been filed for recertification under a 2010 law that requires recertification every two years. Despite frantic efforts to get help from federal legislators, Sweet Home has been forced to complete a full certification process instead of recertification, and that has taken too long for two Josai exchange students to attend Sweet Home High School this year.
The two, instead, are attending Regis High School.
The three Josai faculty members spent Wednesday in Salem and Stayton, visiting their students who are going to school there.
On Thursday the three were hosted at a reception that included School Board President Jason Redick and members Jan Sharp and Mike Reynolds, Supt. Don Schrader, new Josai Coordinator Deborah Handman, Mayor Craig Fentiman, and various teachers, students and community members.
Principal Keith Winslow welcomed the visitors, noting that “1,300 kids have benefited from this program over the years.”
He said that he had received a letter from Josai officials and had responded with one of his own agreeing that the program must continue.
Kato, with Robinson acting as translator, expressed Josai’s “appreciation” for its 30-year relationship with Sweet Home.
“From now on we’re working to build a stronger relationship between the two schools,” he said, adding that Josai plans to bring 10 to 20 students next summer for its bi-annual two-week visit to Sweet Home and hopes to send two students next fall to attend Sweet Home High School. “We really look forward to working together.”
Kato said he appreciated how “so many people on both sides put aside their busy schedules to try to make this thing work.”
Winslow said he appreciated the congenial spirit of the visit.
“We’ve had a lot of laughs,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed it.”
Several at the event told of their own or their children’s experiences on Josai tours.
Nancy Ellis, a teacher whose son Joey traveled to Japan in 2004, told of how her son, now 24, brought his backpack home on a recent visit and she found an album of photos of that trip in the pack.
“It was very important to him,” she said.
Former Josai coordinator Steve Hummer recalled that Ellis’ trip was also Hummer’s first.
“I had no idea what I was getting into at first,” he said. “I had the time of my life. I ate raw horsemeat. I karaoke’d in front of the PTA at Tokyo Bay.”
Allen Buzzard, who with Dawn Barringer Waldrop were the first Josai exchange students in 1972, said the Sweet Home students’ year in Tokyo was “as much an experience for them as for us. “
The program was the brainchild of Harold Merzenich Smith, who taught English at Josai in the early 1970s. The long-term program was actually founded by George Wenzel, and Martina Merzenich, Harold’s mother, who, he said, traveled to Tokyo at her own expense as the first envoy from Sweet Home and spoke before the entire student body at Josai’s Ikebukuro campus, inaugurating the relationship between the two schools.
Robinson said Sweet Home represents an extreme cultural change for Josai students, who live in metropolitan Tokyo.
“It’s so different from the sprawl of Tokyo,” he said. “Here, the students get to let their hair down. There’s openness.”
There’s also a hospitable spirit, he said.
“I think the main thing is the people, the people who take them in.”
Former Josai coordinator Cyndi Burford, who worked to keep the program alive after the red-tape problems arose, said she felt the visit was fruitful in ensuring the continuation of the exchange.
“I felt that they accomplished everything they wanted to,” she said. “They came over with a list and they accomplished everything on that list. They kept saying they felt really happy about being able to meet us face to face. They thoroughly enjoyed meeting the staff and community that was at the reception. It was a very positive feeling.”
Burford said program organizers are awaiting word from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program, better known as SEVIS, that the paperwork is complete and the high school’s certification is approved.
“We are still hoping to have it by December, so Josai can start the advertising process for their parents,” Burford said.
She said that talks with the Josai administrators have led to discussion of expanding the program to include visits of two months or half a year in addition to the two-week summer tours and the year-long program. She said such an addition would be particularly attractive to students in sports, who don’t want to miss a whole year of competition.
“Josai wants to expand and offer more,” she said. “It’s kind of their little niche. Parents are sending their students there because of these exchange opportunities.”