Asobimasho! (Let’s Play!)

BUTTE — From Saroma, Japan to Palmer, Alaska, middle and high school students from different countries are building relationships.

At a barbecue held at Carol and Jaime Hushower’s home on Saturday, Japanese and Alaskan students mingled around a campfire, leapt into a chilly pond and did a lap of the yard during a game of bocce, among other things that kids are wont to do. It was day five of the Saromans’ 13-day stay in Alaska, and the students were already right at home with each other.

“When you just get kids together, and you let them just play … they don’t need us to make them feel comfortable,” Carol Hushower said.

Hushower’s son Tobin, an eighth-grader at Palmer Junior Middle School, was one of eight Palmer students who traveled to Saroma this summer on a 17-day exchange, staying with the same Japanese students who are here now.

“It’s really nice to go and get to learn about a new culture,” Tobin said. “Everybody there was really nice and supportive.”

Now that the situation is reversed, Tobin said he has a better idea of how to accommodate his host brother, Haruki Onishi.

“I definitely know how he feels, how difficult it can be at times but also how fun it can be,” Tobin said.

As Carol Hushower observed, Haruki seems to take everything in stride. On the first night, he got right out there playing soccer with Tobin and his younger brother, Jesse.

Haruki, who’d never been to the U.S. before now, said he’s enjoyed playing games — asobu — and seeing the “beautiful sights” around Alaska. He described his host family as sugoi, which can vary in meaning from “great” to “amazing.”

The biggest difference between Saroma and the Mat-Su Valley, he said, is the scale of everything — in the Valley, there are bigger mountains, bigger houses, bigger yards and more people than in the city of Saroma, which reports a population of 5,617 people.

Haruki said he was also surprised that some people don’t remove their shoes before entering a house, and that most people don’t recycle, unlike in Japan.

Carol Hushower said she noticed that her family is probably louder than the Japanese students’ families, too.

“I think we’ve learned more about us than about them,” she said.

Not every host student — American or Japanese — takes to his or her family as easily as Haruki, though. Hushower said her family once hosted a student who was very homesick at the beginning of the trip, until her husband convinced the student to give his mother a call one night. Reluctant at first, the student seemed to think it more honorable to just grin and bear it, she said, but obviously felt better afterward.

He also brightened up considerably when she put some rice and other familiar foods on the table for dinner one night, she said.

At the end of the exchange, “everyone was in tears saying goodbye,” Hushower said.

History

The sister city exchange between Palmer and Saroma started in 1980, when Palmer’s Ed Holmes first visited his friend, Mutsuhiro Ishiguro, in Saroma for the first time. The men had been communicating via ham radio since 1977, and enjoyed years of friendship before Holmes’ passing in January of 1987.

Holmes’ granddaughter, Tanya Lang, now carries the torch as treasurer for Palmer Saroma Kai, the sister city organization that supports the City of Palmer in its relationship with the City of Saroma.

“My grandfather loved meeting people and he loved learning about different places,” Lang said in a 2013 Palmer Saroma Kai newsletter. “He could have chosen any of the hundreds of ham radio operators he knew to begin a sister city program, but he found that the communities of Saroma and Palmer were very similar in both community and culture.”

Lang was in third grade when she took her first trip to Saroma with Holmes, and visited again last year as a chaperone for the Palmer students. This year is her third hosting Japanese students, who always bring her a new perspective on her hometown, she said.

“I just love seeing Alaska through their eyes. Everything is new again.”

The Saroma students will be in town through Monday, Sept. 19.

To learn more about Palmer Saroma Kai and the sister city relationship, visit the Sister City Program page on www.cityofpalmer.org, or search for “Palmer Saroma Kai” on Facebook.

Contact Palmer Saroma Kai president Carla Swick at carlaswick2010@gmail.com for more information.

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.