Twenty-three UF students will fly to Tokyo on Monday morning.
For the first time, UF students will learn Japanese culture on an eight-day, all-expenses-paid trip. They are traveling as part of the Kakehashi Project, a youth exchange program funded entirely by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said trip chaperone Ann Wehmeyer, a UF professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.
The students, who are all studying Japanese, will be accompanied by two UF professors from the department, she said.
"It’s a one-time opportunity, and various schools across the United States are selected to participate," Wehmeyer said.
About 4,600 high school and college students in Japan and the U.S. have visited each other’s countries in the two years since the Kakehashi Project began, according to the Japan Foundation website.
Once in Japan, students will visit Tokyo’s metropolitan area before boarding a bullet train to Iwate, a town in the northeastern part of Japan’s main island of Honshu. For two days, the students will live with a group of host families.
Yasuo Uotate, a UF senior lecturer in the same department and the second chaperone, said the trip will bridge the gap between the two countries. In Japanese, "Kakehashi" translates to "bridge."
After living in Japan for the first 20 years of his life, Uotate said he’s looking forward to showing students a side of the country they could never learn in their classes alone.
Forty-three UF students applied to take the trip in October, he said. The application was limited to students currently enrolled in Japanese courses and who have never traveled to the country before.
"It’s gonna be I think, like, really eye-opening," he said.
Steffanie Craig, a UF Japanese language and literature junior who will take the trip, said living with a host family will be an interesting cultural experience.
"I’m excited to see what a Japanese household is like and how the family interacts with one another," the 24-year-old wrote in an email.
Craig said nothing compares to learning about a culture firsthand.
"I feel that when you learn from a textbook there is only so much you can truly understand," she said.
Contact Martin Vassolo at mvassolo@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @martindvassolo
