Mrs. Boethin's class showing Japanese respect for teachers.

CANYON CITY – Last week, fourth- and fifth-grade students at Humbolt Elementary School, as well as students at Seneca, were visited by members of the Japan-America Society of Oregon. The four ladies taught the students about life in Japan, including what school was like for Japanese students.

Sheryl Fuller, school visitation program director for the society, led the group: Grace Amasuga moved to Oregon three years ago from California; Kazuko White and Shizue Funaki are both natives of Japan living in the Portland area.

Fuller says that the group has been to schools in Medford and Astoria. Most of their school visits are to schools in the Willamette Valley and the Portland Metro area.

The program included a brief lesson in Japanese, and about the islands and their culture. The students were treated to a verbal field trip around the country and a slide show presentation of schooling in Japan; and each student was presented with a paper showing their name written in Japanese.

Next, the kids were shown how meals are eaten (with chopsticks); some of the games that Japanese students play and things they do; and shown a model of a common apartment in the city to demonstrate how Japanese people live. Because there are so many people living in such a small land area, especially in cities like Tokyo and Osaka, the apartments are only about 600-700 square feet in size.

Fuller first visited Japan as an airline attendant working for Pan American Airlines, flying there frequently. She moved to Portland in 1976, and joined the Japan-America Society soon afterward.

“I was looking for a way to share knowing about other cultures,” she says. She first worked at the Children’s Museum in Portland.

Later, she connected with the Japan-America Society, and began developing a program to share Japanese culture in local schools.

“I’ve been happy everafter,” she says. She has been traveling to schools for eight years.

Japan is made up of four large islands and a large number of small islands; the nation encompasses an area smaller than Montana. Nearly 130 million people live on the islands. The climate is usually warmer and more humid than Oregon, except in the northern reaches.

The people who volunteer are typically Japanese-American or Americans who lived in Japan, says Fuller. Others are Japanese who are living in Oregon with their spouses, usually for about four years at a time. One of them said, “My kids are half-Japanese, half-American. I want to make the world an easier place. So I can go around teaching kids that different is fun, and you’re twice as much, not half as much.”

The group visits about eighty classrooms a year. This year, the society received a grant that enabled visits to schools outside the Portland area.

Fuller says she visits Japan about once a year. Last September, she visited a school and told them about Halloween and carving a pumpkin.

“The kids wanted to know – ask American kids, so when you come back you can tell us, how much homework do they have? What’s their favorite holiday? What other holidays do they share?” Fuller says.

When she shared these questions with the sixth- through eighth-grade students in Seneca, she says they mentioned things like hunting, and horse-back riding and target shooting.

Contact with the society was made through Adele Cerny in Seneca.

“This is the first time they’ve come into Eastern Oregon,” says Kris Beal, principal of Humbolt. “I hope they can come back in two years.”