Mushroom City opens its arms to Japanese students
Morgan Hill – Morgan Hill families rolled out the red carpet welcome as 40 students from Tokyo came to town for a 17-day visit to improve their English skills and learn about American culture.
One of the highlights of their trip was a visit to Valley Pines Retirement Inn on E. Main Avenue on Thursday. Students and their English teacher, Danielle Boulger of PeopleLink, spent several hours with senior citizens, entertaining and being entertained.
After serenading the seniors with several songs in English, they gave them a taste of Tokyo with songs in their native language.
“It was really beautiful, so fun,” said Doreen Cox, a resident of Valley Pines. “They have such beautiful voices.”
Afterward, residents and the Japanese students mingled.
“They are all so charming,” Cox said. “I’m enjoying the opportunity to talk to them about Japan. Tokyo is very different from Morgan Hill.”
Valley Pines residents joined groups of students around tables of six or eight, and listened and watched as the students demonstrated a widely-known craft of their culture, origami.
Fashioning delicate swans from paper, Cox and Naoko Moton discussed Moton’s Morgan Hill experiences.
“My host family is Japanese, very nice,” she said. “The grandmother speaks Japanese, but I practice my English with the rest of the family.”
Though Moton characterized her English abilities as “not very good,” she and the other students communicated freely with the residents at their tables.
“The mountains here are very beautiful,” Moton told Cox. “I never see (mountains) in Tokyo.”
Though there are obvious differences, Moton said, both cultures “have very nice people.”
“In Tokyo, you see tall buildings, more cars and people,” she said. “Here, it is beautiful. The buildings are all flat buildings. Both places have nice people.”
As the paper rectangles were deftly folded and began to take shape, Valley Pines resident Ruby Goldstein gave the students at her table the benefit of her years of experience.
“The most important thing is that you feel comfortable here, comfortable learning about us and experiencing our culture,” Goldstein said. “When you go to the City Hall, when you meet with different people in our city, remember, they are people just like you, and don’t be intimidated.”
The students arrived Feb. 21 and will leave March 9. During their time here, they spend hours in intense study of the English language, using conversational phrases and learning colloquialisms they’re not taught in Japan. Students in the program visit the U.S. only once with the program; however, many of them establish relationships with their host families and return later on their own.
“The words we are learning, they are new,” Moton said. “When people speak slowly, we understand more. It is fun to practice.”
The students will not spend all their time studying. They have a visit to Nordstrom Elementary scheduled this week and sightseeing trips to San Francisco, Monterey and Carmel on the agenda.
They visited City Hall and the library, met with Mayor Dennis Kennedy; they also toured the Morgan Hill Police station and met Chief Bruce Cumming. Packing lunches for the hungry gave them a chance to talk with local volunteers and learn why they want to donate their time. On a lighter note, they spent time shopping and eating in downtown Morgan Hill and at the outlets in Gilroy.
“I would like to see more of these students,” Cox said. “I give them an ‘A’ as teachers and as representatives of their country, they also get an ‘A.’ It’s been great to have them here. They brighten our day.”
