Fabian Fernandez, a junior at Madison Country Day School, said hosting a student from Japan forces you to look at your own culture, and to consider the differences and similarities.

"You kind of get to re-experience your own culture," said Fernandez, whose family has hosted a number of students from other countries. "Even the small things."

Recently, eight Japanese 10th-graders and one teacher were here for nine days and stayed with host families from Madison Country Day School, which they also attended.

Every other year, the students from Hakuoh High School visit Madison Country Day, a private school for pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade students, through a sister-school relationship.

During alternate years, Madison Country Day students visit the school in Ashikaga City, Japan, about 90 miles from Tokyo. This year, five juniors and seniors are considering the trip.

When the Japanese students were here, they spent one class period teaching fifth- and sixth-graders in a Japanese class how to do origami to make paper cranes. It was the start of the school's effort to fold 1,000 cranes to take to Peace Park in Hiroshima when the students visit Japan this summer. As in the past, the school will ask community members to help fold cranes during the International Festival planned for March 6 at the Overture Center.

Student hosts said it was fun introducing the Japanese students to American culture and seeing it through their eyes.

Fernandez said his family took their guest, Yuichiro Machida, to the Wisconsin Union Theater on the UW-Madison campus, where the Japanese student attended his first concert.

Nabukenya Mukasa, a senior at Madison Country Day, said the student living with her was amazed by Grace Episcopal Church because it did not fit her idea of what a church would be like because she had never been in one.

Hosting students also forces you to speak Japanese, said Kelsey Priebe, a senior.

Machida and fellow Japanese student, Haruka Iizumi, said they were impressed by how much students talk during class here because there is more note-taking in Japan.

"In America, students (are) much freer in expressing their opinions," said Iizumi through a translator, Karen Hendrickson, a Japanese teacher at Madison Country Day.

Hendrickson knows firsthand the value of student-exchange programs between countries. When she participated in an abroad program to Kagoshima, Japan, about 25 years ago, it ignited her passion for Japanese.

"There are so many benefits," Hendrickson said. "When you meet people from different countries, you are able to focus on the similarities."

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