SDA recently welcomed Japanese exchange students visiting from Osaka, Japan. They arrived on Friday, Feb. 3, and stayed with host families from the Japanese classes for the past week (they will be departing Saturday, Feb. 11) in order to share the Japanese culture and learn about life here in the USA.

On Saturday, they enjoyed a day at Moonlight Beach. They have also visited Sea World, played table tennis, rocked out to Just Dance, and watched the Super Bowl halftime show (not the actual game, though―football isn’t very popular in Japan). On Friday, the students will be giving presentations to various classes about life in Japan and on Saturday they will enjoy their last day in the U.S. at Disneyland.

Nanami Tomozane, an exchange student living with senior Katie Clark, talked about her typical day at school in Kyoto, Japan. Every morning she wakes up at 5:30 a.m. to take a one-and-a-half hour train ride from her hometown of Osaka to her school in the city of Kyoto. She takes 13 classes at a time on a rotating schedule. Each day, the students go to six classes, including PE, earth science, cooking, Japanese, English, art, Chinese history, and language. Everyone learns a brief introduction to multiple languages. Everyone studies French, Chinese, Korean, and German along with their mandatory Japanese and English classes.

When asked what people in Japan were thinking about the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Tomozane said that it was “a little bit scary,” and that people don’t talk about politics as much in Japan as they do here.

When asked about her favorite American foods, Tomozane said that so far she has tried “hamburger and potato [french fries]” and “chips and avocado [guacamole]” and that she really enjoyed them all. She said she doesn’t want to leave so soon. It is currently snowing in her hometown, so she is loving the SoCal sunshine.

Clark will be sad to see Tomozane leave this Saturday. She has had a lot of fun finding out more about life in Japan and becoming friends with all of the exchange students. She said that she and Tomozane have gotten really close and that it has been “like having a sister for a week.”