By Vy Nguyen
On March 30, 2023, Fountain Valley High School (FVHS) hosted Japanese foreign exchange students on their campus, allowing Japanese students to step into the lives of a Baron for the day.
High school students from all over Japan were given the opportunity to study abroad, while Barons had the opportunity to improve their own Japanese communicational skills. Barons were able to learn from Japanese students in more ways than one, from speaking the Japanese language to gaining insight into a new culture.
Offered for students from Japanese 1 through Japanese 4, all were eager to participate. Through “ghosting,” foreign exchange students followed FVHS students throughout their classes while conversing with Barons, encountering the American high school experience.
During the stay of the exchange students, FVHS’ own Japanese students were encouraged to participate in a variety of discussions and activities, including a session on how to make origami. The day culminated in a lunch time activity of dancing, singing and festivities inspired by Japanese culture.
The foreign exchange program is a special opportunity for students aspiring to be fluent in Japanese, especially with certain challenges particular to the Japanese language.
“Japanese is very unique in the fact that we use different characters, so that’s been the biggest challenge for the students,” Saori Tanaka, Japanese teacher and leader of the foreign exchange program, said. “We have 46 characters and that’s a set, and that’s called hiragana. And then there’s another 46 characters…called katakana. Then, we imported about 40,000 characters from China.”
With a total of over 40,000 different characters carefully crafted and woven together to form the Japanese language, Tanaka observes that this is likely the biggest difference between English and Japanese.
“My students are super excited about having Japanese students over because they were able to test out their language skills with a native speaker,” Tanaka said. “It’s the same age group. It’s not them talking to me, who is a teacher. [Students] got really excited, being complimented by the native speakers of their age group, so that was really rewarding.”
The foreign exchange program has been a long tradition of FVHS, with Tanaka taking the lead on arrangements for the program, along with collaborations from Hayato Yuuki, assistant principal of activities and athletics.
“We’ve been doing this for years and years. It started out with just a lunchtime interaction, and then it evolved to shadowing,” Tanaka said. ”Then, COVID hit so we stopped doing that, but it looks like Japan has sorted out the COVID [situation]…so hopefully we’re going to pick up [the program] every year from now on.”
What was probably the most special part of the program for Barons was building connections with Japanese students. As a teacher, Tanaka puts incredible thought and effort into creating the student pairs to ensure shared interests.
“I requested with the Japanese company that arranges [the students’ travels] to send me a list of their names, their gender preferences of the shadowing buddy, and their hobbies and interests,” Tanaka said. “I made a spreadsheet and then my students were able to…put their names with whoever they shared interests with…They get to talk about K-pop, anime, whatever they like.”
Tanaka is proud of her students for putting their Japanese skills to the test, while also grateful for teachers who were understanding towards the program.
Tanaka had embedded cultural celebrations and exchanges throughout the day and, in the future, she hopes to be able to have more time so that students could go deeper into the culture.
“[There were] lots of smiles and lots of positivity. I think it’s just fun to communicate using the language that they learned and worked hard for, they earned that,” Tanaka said. “I know it takes courage to sign up and be one on one with the native speakers…but they winged it, and I’m very, very proud of them.”
Overall, the exchange program was a great success for both foreign exchange students and Barons. With the foreign exchange program, the Japanese language that students have studied for so long in the pages of their textbooks is brought to life.
