Nine students and five chaperones from Brea’s sister city, Hanno, Japan, arrived at LAX for their annual student delegation visit, Jan. 13.

The foreign visitors traveled almost 8,000 miles from their homeland. Upon their arrival, the envoys boarded a charter bus to a welcome dinner hosted by the Brea Rotary Club and the Brea Sister City Association.

After the introductions and presentations had been made, the Hanno students departed to stay with their personal student hosts.

“The students from Hanno stay with student hosts rather than adults because it is just a wonderful experience for both of them.

On one hand, the students from Brea get to experience the Japanese culture firsthand. On the other hand, the Hanno students feel much more at ease with someone their own age,” explained Masako White, Japanese teacher.

The next day, the Hanno students accompanied their hosts to the campus and took part in activities such as folding paper into traditional origami and writing Japanese characters in the form of calligraphy.

Later during the same day, they showcased a special percussion performance at the boys versus girls school rally.

“It was very fun, but it was scary too. There were so many people out in the crowd,” said Saki Konuma, Hanno student.

After visiting the school, the Hanno students and their hosts had a picnic at Tri-City Park, where the students had an opportunity to socialize and take part in various activities and games.

When the weekend arrived, each host family had the opportunity to take the Hanno students to a memorable place.

“The Brea Sister City Association already has a lot of events planned out. But my family showed [our Hanno student] around the Brea mall, went out for a nice dinner, and took him to Disneyland. A lot of the students wanted to go to Disneyland, so we wanted to give them that opportunity,” said Julian Lee, junior.

On the following Monday, the students from Hanno waited to get onto another bus ride. But this time, they were accompanied by their Brea hosts and instead of attending a welcome dinner, they enjoyed a day long visit to Universal Studios.

“One of my favorite parts of this trip was when I went to Universal Studios. I had a really good time with everybody,” said Konuma.

The Hanno students then visited the high school during the morning and visited the junior high in the afternoon, where they observed the activities of different classes.

“American classes and students are very different from Japanese ones. Here, the students are much more energetic and aggressive while in Japan, everyone is very quiet and reserved. The different personalities should mix and it is interesting to see how things turn out,” said Tamiji Okano, Hanno Municipal Board of Education supervisor.

After classes were over, the Hanno visitors joined the students from Brea for a farewell pot-luck dinner.

On the final day of their stay in America, the Hanno and BOHS students participated in Undoukai, also known as Sports Day. Sports Day is a tradition that the Hanno students have enjoyed with Brea students since the exchange program first began.

During the sports event, participants enjoyed traditional inari and edamame snacks, spent a few hours together on the track field and the main gym, and played various games.
One event was called the spoon relay, where the students ran a relay while holding a spoon that contained a tennis ball. The goal was to successfully finish the race quickly without dropping the ball. Hanno and BOHS students were especially engaged in this relay because it required much teamwork amongst each other.

In the afternoon, the Hanno students enjoyed lunch, toured Brea for the last time, and said their good-byes to their host families at the Civic Center. Afterwards, they took a bus ride to the Los Angeles Airport, where they boarded a plane back to Japan.

However, this will not be the last interaction between Hanno and Brea. In February, the former hosts will become the new visitors as students from Brea visit Hanno.

“It is sort of like a trade-off. We have sent students back and forth for the last 29 years. However, this is not just limited to students taking Japanese. Anyone in the entire student body can go to Hanno if they apply,” said White.