OXNARD : Japanese Enjoy Taste of College Life in States

After sharing a classic American meal of hot dogs and hamburgers with students and faculty of their sister school, Oxnard College, more than 100 Japanese students visiting the campus did something their hosts hadn’t expected.

Their teachers whipped out large plastic bags and ordered the teen-agers to clean up the courtyard. Not even the tiniest piece of paper remained when they had finished, said Cathy Granica, Oxnard College’s public information officer.

The swiftness and thoroughness with which the students followed their teachers’ orders represented a dramatic difference between the Japanese students and the American ones they were visiting.

And after spending Thursday with students at Oxnard High School and Friday at the community college, the Japanese students say that though they don’t particularly like American food, they appreciated the carefree, casual feel of American schools.

“We feel free here because in Japan the teachers are so strict,” Atsuo Tanaka, an 18-year-old business student from Tokyo, said through an interpreter.

Tanaka is one of 110 students from Tokyo’s Kokusai business and confectionary colleges who toured the campus, made Napoleon pastry puffs with students in Oxnard’s culinary arts program, took crash courses in conversational English and mingled with Oxnard students at a midday barbecue.

This is the fifth year that students from the Japanese private school have visited their American sister school. This year brought 55 students from the school’s confectionary college--which trains pastry chefs--and 55 students from its business college.

The trip, funded by their parents, gives them the chance to see how American students are taught, said Kokusai’s principal, Keisuke Tanaka. Tanaka’s ties to the Oxnard area stem from 1957, when he was an apprentice at a local farm as part of a statewide exchange program. Hoping to provide his students with a similar experience, Kokusai asked Oxnard to become its sister school in 1990.

Officials are still working on a formal exchange program, but about 30 Japanese students are now enrolled at Oxnard College. A few of them introduced themselves to the Kokusai students and offered help translating. Some Kokusai students said they were eager to join their ranks in American schools. In Japan, they said, students have to study all the time, but American students study only if they want to.

On Thursday, the students visited Oxnard High School where they played volleyball and demonstrated the art of origami, sculpting animal figures out of delicate colored paper.

But it is the rest of their nine-day trip, which includes visits to Disneyland and Universal Studios, that the students are really looking forward to.

“We can’t wait to go shopping,” said Hitomi Ariyama, a 17-year-old from Tokyo.