Sister Cities program offers local students taste of Japan
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Rising WCHS sophomore Lacey Pack was among the group and says the journey was both a learning experience and an adventure. Pack says she has always wanted to visit Japan and when a friend from history class, Taylor Hennessee, told her about Sister Cities, she jumped at the chance.
Pack, who is the granddaughter of Ken and Nona Martin, said the two-week trip was exciting, but she did have some mixed emotions her first time that far away from home.
“I kind of wanted to come home, but I kind of didn’t,” Pack said. “But it was wonderful, with the scenery and everything.”
Pack said the flight over was a journey in itself.
“It was too long,” she said. “It was over 13 hours. You had to drive to Nashville, then you had to get on the plane and go to Chicago, which is an hour, then you get on another plane and you go to Tokyo, which is 13 hours. It ended up being a long trip.”
In Tokyo, the group stayed at the Prince Hotel for three days and took a bus tour around the city during their stay. They then took the Bullet Train from Ueno Station to Niigata Station and traveled by bus to Mikawa Village, where they stayed with one of two host families.
“We had a village family,” Pack said, “and we had our town family.”
The language barrier was somewhat of a problem, but Pack said she managed to communicate fairly well.
“In my village family, the daughter spoke English really well,” Pack said. “She said she only spoke a little, but she spoke it fluently. But my town family, the Honmas, they didn’t speak it hardly at all. I’d write down something, and it would take them 20 minutes to try to decipher what I’d written. They could read it better than they could speak it. It was pretty hard the first couple of days.
“But it got better. You did a lot of using your hands and playing charades,” Pack added. “But it was fine. We finally got it.”
Pack said she was impressed with Japanese culture.
“It was amazing,” she said. “It’s so different than us. They are so humble and polite and clean. Like having to take your shoes off at the door every time. I had to wear slippers because I was a guest, and when you go to the bathroom, you have to put on another pair of slippers, and then to come back, you have to put the other ones back on. Then when you go over to eat, you had to change into another set of slippers. It’s so clean, so much more clean than here.”
Pack said she loved the architecture, but it was really crowded in a lot of places.
“There weren’t many big open grass spaces,” Pack said.
Though the American teens were warned to be polite and respectful, Pack said teens in Japan aren’t all that different than their American visitors.
“They’re respectful,” Pack said, “but they don’t exactly do everything they’re told. They’re like us,” she added with a smile.
According to Pack, one of the things that took the most getting used to was the food.
“They had sushi,” Pack said. “Some people eat sushi and they like it, but I didn’t like that.”
She was even more surprised at some of the flavors of ice cream available in Japan.
“I tried green bean ice cream,” Pack said. “It tasted like raw green beans.”
But the real surprise came when Pack and her friend Hannah visited an aquarium with some Japanese friends.
“They asked if we were hungry, and we said, ‘Yeah, a little bit.’ So they asked if we wanted some ice cream, and we said, ‘Oh yes.’ So we got some and we were digging into it, I got vanilla and she got chocolate. I was sitting with some of my Japanese friends and they said, ‘You like?’ And I said, ‘Yes, this is good.’ And they said, ‘Ah, jellyfish ice cream.'”
Though she liked most of the foods offered to her, Pack said she decided to give the jellyfish ice cream to a friend.
Pack said the trip provided a look into a different society for her, and she would like to go back someday.
“I learned a lot,” she said. “Things about their culture, they respect everything. We went to festivals. Dressing in a kimono. We danced. It was a lot of fun. I got kind of homesick, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”