exchange student week

For the second time in three years, we participated in a program to host Japanese exchange students for a week.

We do it through local org that brings students a few times a year. Our guests were 2 16-year-old boys, Yuki and Haruto.

Here’s how it works:

• After some vetting, the org matches you with 2 students and gives you $700.
• We pick up the boys on Sunday evening. In this program, there was a total of 40 students.
• We bring them to BART each morning so they can join the rest of the students on a day-long excursion. Some examples included seeing a museum and GG bridge, and visiting Stanford & Cal. We pick them up from BART around 5pm.
• They leave the following Saturday morning.

Effectively, you hang out with them for 6 evenings. It’s not a big commitment, still we make it a hectic week. We take them out to dinner (burger night, bbq night, taco night, take-out night where we get pizzas from multiple places for a taste test), go bowling, host gatherings with Japanese-speaking friends (we did that on 2 separate nights). We take them shopping as they always want to buy gear. The Dick’s Sporting Goods excursion has never failed.

Navigating the language barrier is part of the adventure. The upside of this is the bonding. It is remarkable how memorable both Yinh and I and our boys find this. They still refer to Mihiro and Tomonuri who we hosted in 2023. In fact, the boys stay in touch Yinh via IG and even reached out when we posted the photos of our latest guests.

There’s a ritual where the students give gifts from Japan and share the notes their parents send. This is one of my favorite things…to read what someone says about their babies that they send over. Neither of our guests had ever left Japan until this trip. Imagine writing that note.

We send them home with lots of swag and notes back to their parents telling them how well-mannered their sons are (which is impossible to exaggerate). It’s delightful to hear about their families, upbringing, what they want to study or do when they grow up. And of course, to see the questions and thoughts it prompts in our own kids. After the 2023 visit our boys wanted to learn a foreign language because when they saw their Japanese friends talking to our visitors, it looked like a superpower. Since then, they have been enthusiastic students of Vietnamese and now have a secret language with mom and grandma that daddy doesn’t understand.

I could go on, but it’s one of those things that you either think sounds cool or doesn’t, I just want to remind you that it exists. I think it’s great for families with kids, but I also noticed that there’s a lot of empty-nesters at the pickup. Not a bad way to bring the sound of voices back into a house that’s too big for a couple.

Oh and a fun thing I just learned yesterday as we were chatting about our guests with good friends who live in Texas, who also had a memorable bond with their Japanese students: this summer when visiting Japan for their son’s baseball tourney, their students’ whole family flew to see them and watch the games!