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Last Friday on the 28^th of January, a bus full of Japanese exchange students arrived at SDA. Most of them had short black hair, plaid shirts, and colorful tennis shoes. They were eighth graders with charmingly crooked smiles and cheeks flushed red. When Ayumi Ono was asked about American food she said, “It’s big, big, big!” She mentioned how much more oily American food is, although her favorite foods are chocolate and meat.

Ono attends Alice Junior high school in a city north of Honshu, and loves a Japanese band called Green. She was wearing a white sweatshirt with the words, “Let’s Get Back to the Basics” plastered on the front in black bold letters, with a little pink heart at the end. Many of the students wore clothes decorated with weirdly phrased English sentences.

When Ono was asked if she was carrying a cell phone, she crossed her hands as she carefully said no. Last year after the Japanese exchange students arrived, SDA students were immediately stunned by the technology gap between our cell phones and their super flip phones with translators and fist sized key chains included. There was a notable lack of fancy cell phones this year.

While there were no bejeweled cell phones flaunted on campus during the Japanese exchange students visit, there was no shortage of excitement. The students did many fascinating, exotic presentations after school in the Japanese classroom. Many of them laid paper and ink brushes across the floor, and artfully painted Kanji and hiragana. Their spectacular written language inspired many “Ooo”s and “aww”s from SDA’s students.

After the Japanese exchange students finished dazzling SDA with their presentations, SDA also performed a little. A boy appeared to improvise a dance. Unexpectedly, the lights were shut off, and an SDA student put on gloves with bright rainbow tips that lit up.

As he twisted and spun his rainbow neon hands around in close proximity to the Japanese exchange students faces, they were either captivated or flummoxed. SDA never fails to surprise itself, and foreign visitors. Needless to say, the Japanese exchange students went away from here with a unique impression of California and hopefully some improved English.