After studying Japan for six years, graduating sixth-graders from Great Falls Elementary School’s Japanese Immersion Program finally got to see the country first-hand late last month. "Being there and seeing everything was so much different than learning about it," said student Emily Nesbitt.

She and her classmates and their parents spent two weeks in Japan, as sixth-grade classes from the school have done for years. They returned home Saturday, July 5 after adventures that included meeting the country’s former prime minister, staying in Japanese households, visiting ground-zero of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, attending a Japanese baseball game and climbing Mount Fuji.

As an aficionado of Japanese cuisine, Emily said eating old favorites and trying new dishes was one of the activities she enjoyed most on the trip. She said she also liked visiting Harajuku, a "really funky" district of Tokyo where outrageous outfits are the norm. "They had big, poofy skirts and hair dyed every color," she said. "It was really fun to see." Emily said the Mount Fuji climb was difficult but rewarding. "I liked the view, being above the clouds and looking down on everything."

"You see all this weather swirling around below you," said Andy Dolan, father of Great Falls graduate Patrick Amano-Dolan, describing the mountain as "really spectacular."


THE TRAVELERS took a bus to the fifth of the mountain’s 10 stations and climbed to the seventh station, where they were to nap until around midnight and continue their climb in time to get to the top by sunrise. However, high winds and driving rain kept them in the station until morning, so they had to turn back within sight of the peak in order to catch the bus back into town.

Patrick said he enjoyed the hike, adding, "The problem for me was that I had such a bad headache the whole way." The headache is a symptom of altitude sickness and is common on mountains as tall as Mount Fuji. Nonetheless, Patrick said he would do it over again.

Emily’s mother, Beth Nesbitt, said the group took the climb slowly to try to avoid altitude sickness and that staying in the cabin helped them acclimate to the lower oxygen levels. She said she felt "pretty short of breath" when they arrived at the seventh station but felt better the next morning. She called the climb her favorite part of the trip. "It’s just beautiful. You’re out in the middle of the forests and the mountain just rises up, black lava with snow on top."

Another highlight for her and many of the other adults was staying in traditional Japanese inns called ryokans. There, Nesbitt said, a few women who live on each floor guide guests to their rooms and prepare them tea, which the guests drink sitting on woven straw mats called tatami. Robes are provided for a trip to the hotel’s public baths, and when guests return to their rooms after dinner, the tea table has been pushed aside and replaced by futons.

"It’s really getting to experience that culture entirely," Carl Serger, who went on the trip with his two sons, said of the stay in the ryokans.

Dolan said the public baths, traditional in Japan, were one of several cultural challenges the children overcame. "After they kind of got over their modesty, I think they really enjoyed it," he said.

However, it was a less traditional hotel in Tokyo that especially impressed the students.

"This hotel has everything," said former sixth-grader Nick Serger, noting that attractions at the Shinagawa Prince Hotel included stores, an indoor roller coaster and an aquarium complete with dolphin and sea lion shows.

His third-grade brother John, who also went on the trip, noted that the aquarium also contained "a humungous shark."

Student Jamie Joeyen-Waldorf said the hotel also housed something like 20 restaurants and a movie theater and that she found little reason to spend her time elsewhere during the stay in Tokyo.

She said another of her favorite activities had been the visit to Hiroshima, where she enjoyed visiting the Peace Memorial Museum and hanging 1,200 origami cranes at the Children’s Peace Monument on behalf of Langley High School graduate Nick Cafferky, who was paralyzed in a diving accident last summer. The cranes were folded by Cafferky’s classmates in accordance with the Japanese legend that folding a thousand cranes will get a wish granted. Jamie said the museum, which commemorates the atomic bombing of the city, was "very sad but interesting."

"You could see they were really trying to take it in," Dolan said of the students. While some other young visitors at the museum were "kind of laughing and joking around," he said, the Great Falls Elementary graduates were trying to understand not only who was affected by the bombs and why they were dropped but also a presentation on nuclear fission.


ANOTHER, MORE FESTIVE, favorite among the children was the baseball game between the Tokyo Giants and the Yakult Swallows in the Tokyo Dome. Patrick said he liked the game better than American baseball because a cheering section with organized chants made the game more exciting.

Nick said a small section of vastly outnumbered Swallows fans had a drummer and horn player and pulled out umbrellas and waved them up and down whenever their team scored a run. "It was interesting," he said.

"And hilarious," interjected his brother. John Serger also noted that, while his brother had managed to catch a ball during the game, another member of the group "got a baseball in a very different way" when the ball knocked the chopsticks out of her hand and landed in her food.

During the group’s stay in Fukuyama, John had not stayed with a Japanese family like the sixth-graders, but he had participated in lessons in Japanese calligraphy, tea ceremony and stick fighting. The stick fighting, called kendo, had been his favorite. "It’s like fencing, sort of," he said. "I like sword fighting, and I like just fighting another person." This story is not the first time the trip landed John in a newspaper — a picture of him putting on kendo gear ran in a Japanese newspaper.

Jamie said the kendo demonstration, given by teens from the Kake school system, with whom Great Falls Elementary has a partnership, "looked really painful." However, she said, when it came time for the Great Falls children to take up kendo sticks, they were the only ones doing the striking, hitting teens in protective gear in the wrists, waists and heads. "The girls didn’t hit them that hard, but the boys were really whacking them," she said.


THE FAMILIES with whom the sixth-graders stayed for two nights in Fukuyama had children in the Kake school system, specifically in Great Falls Elementary’s sister school, Eisugakkan Elementary.

Patrick said he liked his home-stay because it was with a "more traditional Japanese family," although he said he hardly saw the father, a fisherman, who started work at 5 a.m. and got home around midnight. He said the family had invited friends over and had taken him to a shrine. Like the other children, he said he was able to communicate with his host family in Japanese, although he said it was helpful that the mother could speak English.

Nick recalled playing with water balloons and fireworks and going to an arcade with his home-stay family, while the family with whom Emily stayed showed her "cool places in town," such as a favorite bakery and a ramen shop. The ramen there, she said, was better than Top Ramen. Jamie, too, had lit fireworks with her host family, and she recalled going out to dinner and watching the Japanese children catch frogs and other creatures in a neighboring rice paddy.

The other family the children met was former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife Akie. "We all did our speeches and I think we impressed him, more than what he expected," said Jamie. In her speech, delivered in Japanese, she had told the Abes about the sharp contrasts between different Japanese lodging establishments and how the students were looking forward to spotting similarities and differences between Japanese and American home life.

They met the Abes at the Japanese Diet, which houses the country’s legislative branch, and they received what Jamie described as a lengthy tour. "So I felt kind of important," she said.

"That was just so amazing," said Emily, noting that the Diet was a "really beautiful building" with impressive stained glass windows and artwork. "Meeting Mr. Abe was so cool. I mean, he’s the former prime minister," she said. "He and his wife were really nice."

Dolan said he thought the children fully realized Abe’s significance after the meeting, when the Japanese students "started swarming him and getting all excited. They were going crazy. It was like a rock star."

"They all had a good attitude about trying new things and just understanding what the culture’s all about," Dolan said of the Great Falls children. "I couldn’t imagine it having gone any smoother or being more interesting or fun than it was."

"By far, this is the best vacation I can remember," said Carl Serger. He said he had tried to sample everything he could and take in as much of the culture as possible, although he said he was not sure that he would want seconds of every dish he had tried.

Beth Nesbitt said she had learned that it would be impossible for her to ever truly fit into what she called "a very beautiful, complicated culture." The trip had made her want to learn more about Japanese history, she said.

Patrick said he had gained a new perspective not only on Japan but also on life in the U.S. "They didn’t take anything for granted," he said of the Japanese. "Even if they didn’t get to do much, they try to make everything fun."