OXNARD : Mayor of Japanese City Pays Respects

The mayor of the Japanese city of Shizuoka paid his respects to the city of Oxnard Monday, in what city officials hope is the start of a beautiful relationship.

Shizuoka was named Oxnard’s Friendship City last year, and Mayor Shingo Amano attended the dedication Monday of a walkway leading to an entrance of Oxnard’s new library that has been named for the Japanese city.

The visit by Amano and Sadao Araki, Shizuoka’s deputy director, was part of a weeklong trip to the U.S. that included meetings with planning consultants and trips to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas.

In Oxnard, Amano toured Heritage Square and took a guided tour of the city’s $12-million library, scheduled to open in March.

Oxnard Mayor Nao Takasugi said making Shizuoka a Friendship City was a natural follow-up to the city’s Sister City relationship with Ocotlan, a city of 100,000 in the Mexican state of Jalisco.

“From the beautiful experiences we’ve had with our sister city, it’s a natural forward step to expand our relationships with countries in our neighboring Pacific Rim,” Takasugi said.

He compared the relationships between cities to those between prospective marriage partners. “Like a marriage, there are usually several years of courting,” Takasugi said.

Possible ties with the city of Baguio in the Philippines, for example, are just in the “talking stage,” Takasugi said.

But the courtship with Shizuoka that began in 1989 when Takasugi was asked to judge a beauty contest in Shizuoka while touring Japan has steadily blossomed.

This year, the cities hope to nurture the budding relationship through an International Friendship Baseball Tournament in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, to which Shizuoka will send its champion high school team.

During a tour of Oxnard’s new 72,000-square-foot library, Amano reacted with surprise when told that volunteers will help run the facility.

Wearing a pin with the American and Japanese flags in his lapel, Amano also puzzled over some of the differences between the two countries and, through an interpreter, deftly handled questions about the countries’ strained relations.

He downplayed friction between the two countries over trade issues and over critical remarks by some Japanese leaders about U.S. work habits.

“America is not a rival of Japan,” Amano said.

But there was a curious side to the trade issues that stumped him, Amano said. While more Americans are driving Japanese imports, Japanese who emigrate to the United States do not favor them.

“Japanese who are here in America are driving American cars,” Amano said. “I don’t understand why.”