A contingent visiting the Richmond area from Japan will talk about music, culture, food — and tragedy.
The 10 high school students and two chaperones arrived Sunday afternoon at Clover Hill High School in Chesterfield County.
They were full of good cheer despite 15 hours of travel by plane and bus. But the triple tragedy in Japan — a huge earthquake, a devastating tsunami and a nuclear power-plant crisis — was high in their minds.
"We want Americans to know what is going on in Japan," said Tamura Hiroyuki, one of the chaperones.
The visitors are from a high school in Saitama, just north of Tokyo and 150 miles or more from the hardest-hit part of northeast Japan.
Saitama did not receive major damage, but when the earthquake struck the afternoon of March 11, "We could hardly stand," Hiroyuki said.
One of the students, Ryota Fujino, 16, said his grandmother, who lives in the hard-hit area, lost her home. "Her house was moved by the tsunami."
She was missing for days but had found high ground and is now living in a shelter. Fujino said he was shocked at first but is happy to know she is OK.
Kanako Takahashi, 16, said northeastern Japan is quite cold, and the natural disaster knocked out power there. "Many people want to get warm. It is very hard," especially on the old.
Akane Nakakura, 15, said she has friends who had to move from their home near the radiation-leaking Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. They are living in a shelter.
"They are really worried about the (possible radiation) damage of their bodies," Nakakura said.
Her host, 14-year-old Danielle Lemite, a Clover Hill freshman, said she plans to go with her new friend to the Science Museum of Virginia, Short Pump Town Center and possibly the Picasso art exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
"I was really excited" when Nakakura arrived, Lemite said. "I wanted to see what she looked like and what she was like, her personality."
The visitors will be at Clover Hill for a week as part of the Richmond Sister Cities program, which encourages cultural, academic and sports exchanges between Richmond and cities from different countries.
The sister-cities program began nationally in the 1950s. Richmond City Council in 1980 established a Sister Cities Commission, which organizes the exchanges locally. Richmond has seven sister cities, including cities in England, Poland, South Korea, China and Namibia and Mali in Africa.
(804) 649-6453
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement