Japanese Students View the Good and Bad Sides of American Culture

There were times this month when Japanese tour leader Kyoko Oyama felt that the direction things were going was from bad to worse, rather than eastward from Tokyo to Los Angeles.

Oyama operates a small English language school in Japan and, for the last three summers, has escorted students to Los Angeles to stay in local homes.

The idea is for the youngsters to absorb English by soaking up American culture. For three weeks, they study in the morning, see sights during the afternoon and mingle with their host families in the evening.

This summer, however, there were doubts that the group would ever get to Los Angeles. Once they did arrive, some visitors had fleeting doubts that they would ever get back home.

The trouble started when the American travel agency that Oyama paid to arrange discount airline tickets failed at the last minute to provide them.

Once the group reached Los Angeles, one of the 13 visitors was robbed at gunpoint of $400 cash and credit cards outside a restaurant.

Another was in a yogurt shop when gunmen rushed in, terrorized customers and ordered the store’s clerks to empty the cash register.

A third had her passport stolen by a pickpocket.

“Never before have I had all these headaches,” said Oyama, 40. “There were times I almost passed out from worry.”

At the Tokyo airport, Oyama had to hurriedly withdraw $20,000 from her family’s savings to buy new airline tickets for the students. Because it was moments before flight time, she had to pay full fare--about twice the price of the discount tickets.

“The travel agency just said ‘sorry,’ ” she shrugged. “But I said sorry doesn’t do us any good. We had sent our money far in advance. The new tickets were almost twice as much as we planned. They said they would refund the money we paid, but I’m not sure we’ll ever get it.”

Oyama loaned spending money to tour group member Akio Nanaumi after he was robbed outside a Studio City restaurant.

She helped calm a shaken Kazuya Mihara after his brush with robbers at the North Hollywood yogurt shop where his host family’s son works.

She arranged for pickpocket victim Takako Kato to acquire a replacement passport during a stopover in Honolulu on the trip home on Wednesday.

The unexpected snags made the rest of the trip seem a snap--including the task of finding suitable host families and coordinating transportation between residences scattered from Orange County to the San Fernando Valley.

The excursion costs the students about $2,300 each. That price includes air fare, admission to places such as Disneyland, a brief side trip to New York City, and a $100 stipend to host families.

Oyama calls her tiny tour service the “L.A.-Tokyo connection.” Her Los Angeles connection is a friend, Mike Sudo of Hancock Park. His job is to recruit the host families and arrange air and ground transportation.

Sudo is a 23-year-old USC graduate who works for his family’s development company. He met Oyama four years ago when he was living in Japan during an overseas college program. He applied for a job as an English teacher at her private tutoring school in Chiba, 30 miles east of Tokyo.

Sudo eventually returned to Los Angeles. When Oyama began organizing her summertime tours, she invited him to join the venture.

Sudo has called upon his friends to help find private homes for the Japanese. They also chauffeur the visitors from the host homes to morning English classes and to such afternoon destinations as Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive.

“This whole thing is basically run by kids,” Sudo said. “It’s a lot of work and pain. This time, things just kept going wrong.”

Aside from the robberies and rip-offs, all sides pronounced this year’s venture a success.

Arisa Okazaki, 13, said the Donald Laws family of Westminster went out of its way to make her feel comfortable. “They did favors for me, like getting my pictures developed and cooking and washing for me,” she said.

Satoko Hasegawa, 14, said the Art Depew family of North Hollywood took her to American restaurants, a concert and a supermarket. There, she was surprised to find “a Japanese corner where they sold sushi to go.” It wasn’t home-style sushi, “but I enjoyed it.”

Barbara Bragonier of Redondo Beach said her family took 25-year-olds Junko Inoe and Miho Matsushita to South Bay restaurants and shops.

“The language barrier melted away as we got acquainted. We were able to communicate. There was a lot of gesturing and searching for the right word until something clicked,” said Bragonier, professor of women’s studies at Cal State Long Beach.

Anne Loveland, 19, of Hancock Park was one of seven drivers who helped Oyama and Sudo coordinate the tour. She said she was surprised to find that the Japanese students were just like Americans: fun, silly and energetic.

“I now know how to say ‘wait just a moment, please’ in Japanese,” Loveland said.