Yura Inoue, a middle school student from Miyazaki, Japan, spent Thursday morning at Robert Abbott Middle School in Waukegan. Part of the time was in a math class. Despite limited knowledge of English, she understood the problems and had a solution for the language barrier.
Inoue did have an advantage. In Japan, middle school is the equivalent of grades seven through nine, but in Waukegan Community Unit School District 60 middle school consists of the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.
“I understood a lot of the numbers because I had it last year,” Inoue said through an interpreter. “I used a translation app to understand the rest.”
Inoue was one of 10 middle school students from Miyazaki who spent Aug. 17 through Saturday visiting Waukegan as part of a Sister Cities delegation touring much of the city, including the library, the Genesee Theatre, the beach, a grocery store, the College of Lake County and elsewhere.
Rika Kubota is part of the Sister Cities organization in Miyazaki and was one of the adults in the delegation. She said it is important to give the young people of her community exposure to different cultures and countries. China and Korea are too similar to Japan, she said.
“We want to enhance their experiences and open their eyes to the world,” Kubota said. “We wanted to begin with our sister city first, where the culture is much different from Japan or China. We want them to learn the history and hear the language.”
Located near the Pacific Ocean, Miyazaki is in the extreme southern portion of Japan with a population of slightly less than 400,000. David Motley, Waukegan’s director of public relations, said Waukegan and Miyazaki became sister cities in 1990.
At the time, Motley said Waukegan architect Joe Leggett was designing a building for Deerfield-based Baxter in Miyazaki. He liked the idea of starting a relationship between his city, and Miyazaki and reached out to then-Mayor Haig Paravonian. Negotiations began and a deal was made.
When Inoue and Nagomi Nakashima, another ninth grader on the trip from Miyazaki, were asked Friday during lunch at Green Town Tavern after a tour of the Waukegan History Museum at the Carnegie the highlight of their visit so far, their answer was quick and in English.
“The school,” they said in unison.
Both Nakashima and Inoue said their American peers were “very welcoming.” With nearly everyone in their school at home is Japanese, they said they liked the multicultural makeup in Waukegan.
“The school is very different than in Japan,” Nakashima said through an interpreter. “It is a mix of everything, I saw people who looked different than I’ve ever seen before. They have different religions in the United States. There are a lot of different customs.”
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Yaretzi Nava, an Abbott eighth grader, said she liked her time with the students she met from Japan. She noticed similarities and differences, particularly in the culture of the schools in the two countries.
“They have really strict schools from what the girls told me,” Nava said. “They have really strict rules for makeup and phones. It’s really strange, because we always see girls with makeup and their phones.”
Kain Ortega, an Abbott seventh grader and an ambassador for the visit, said as he talked to his peers from across the globe, they found things in common. Some were observed, and others were discussed.
“We talked about different trading cards and different types of movies we watch,” Ortega said. “It was looking at the differences we have, like clothing and ages.”
When the Miyazaki delegation visited Waukegan Municipal Beach, viewing water they could not see across was nothing different. Yet, there was a major difference.
“There was no ocean smell, no salt,” Inoue said.
The Japanese students got a strong dose of American food while in Waukegan. Nakashima said her host family took her for donuts and they were very different from the style in Japan. She likes both.
“Our donuts are chewier,” she said. “These have more sugar and are very sweet, but they’re delicious.”
Many stops on the first two days of their visit took them to places near downtown like the library, City Hall, the Waukegan Police Station, the Waukegan Fire Station and the Genesee Theatre. They also got to the Waukegan National Airport and the Waukegan Sports Park.
After spending Wednesday touring Chicago, the delegation went to Abbott Middle before lunch at Green Town Tavern and visited the Patricia Jones Center Corrine J. Rose Park.