Brea : Japanese Youths Tour on a Sister City Visit
They made the usual tourist stops--Disneyland, Hollywood, the Queen Mary. But a group of junior high school students from Hanno, Japan, also got a firsthand look at the American educational system during their just-concluded Sister City visit.
In addition to touring the UCLA campus, during their two-week visit the 18 students sat in on classes at Brea-Olinda High, Brea Junior High and Laurel Elementary schools.
One of the differences they noticed was that their American counterparts are not responsible for maintenance chores.
“Their schools are different,” said Dennis Pray of the Brea Sister City Assn. “They don’t have janitors or maintenance people in their schools. The students do it.”
And graffiti “is unheard of” in Japan, Pray added.
The students and their six adult chaperons were officially welcomed to Brea by Mayor Bev Perry on Tuesday as part of the City Council meeting. The meeting at the Brea Civic & Cultural Center came shortly after Japan was struck with its deadliest earthquake since 1923.
Perry and the other council members offered their prayers and hopes that friends and relatives of the students were unharmed. Hanno, which is near Tokyo, was far enough away from the earthquake epicenter to escape damage.
Next month, 10 Brea high school students and three chaperons will visit Hanno.
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