PORT ANGELES — Ten Japanese students visiting from Port Angeles’ sister city hosted culture fairs on Monday afternoon at Stevens and Roosevelt middle schools.
About 150 Port Angeles students attended the fairs, and had a chance to learn different Japanese games, traditions and writing techniques.
“I think the culture fair is a wonderful experience for Port Angeles students,” said Stacey Sanders, the foreign language teacher at Roosevelt Middle School who helps organize the Junior Ambassadors Program event every year.
“It’s not a textbook or a video teaching them something, but a person-to-person relationship.”
Kaho Wada, one of the 10 students from Mutsu City, Japan, shared elements of a traditional Japanese tea ceremony during the fair at Stevens Middle School.
Tea ceremony etiquette
The students learned two of the Japanese greetings before drinking the tea, and the proper way to turn the cup during the ceremony.
The entire tea ceremony usually takes 30 minutes, Wada said, but she couldn’t show all of it because of time.
Not all of the students liked the way the tea tasted, but each one of them listened to the instructions carefully and dared to try something new.
“Five kids really can influence a couple kids in a day or two,” said Chuck Lisk, Stevens Middle School principal.
This is especially true of the middle school students hosting one of the Japanese students for the week.
Tyler Silva, an eighth-grader at Stevens who is one of the hosts, said he never thought about water conservation until this week.
He said it struck him as odd the first time the student he was hosting turned the water on and off while showering.
However, the event sparked a conversation of differences between living in the United States and Japan.
