An Exchange Journal

Nineteen hours of flying, two hours of driving - a world away from home!  Welcome, Akira, to what we hope will become your second favorite place on earth.  Through this webpage, we hope to share this adventure with you, your friends and family in Japan, and your new friends and exchange family here in Ely.

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Claire and Akira first scrape out the innards of their pumpkins

Americans enjoy celebrating Halloween, with children dressed up in costumes ringing doorbells throughout the neighborhoods on October 31 as they "Trick or Treat!"  Pumpkins are carved into scary or funny faces and set out with a candle burning inside to decorate homes, along with skeletons, ghosts, witches, spiders and black cats.  Akira was introduced to pumpkin carving and made his jack o'lantern a unique blend of Japanese and American cultures.

Carving takes concentration and a steady hand.

Akira's finished jack o'lantern.

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Akira introduced his host family and some friends to Japanese food, cooking Chahan (pork fried rice) for them and then demonstrating how to use chopsticks.  Photos by Sarah Guy-Levar, 2013-10-20:

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The weekend of September 19 offered a chance for Akira to meet some other Rotary Exchange students and share some fun and get more insight into the program.  Here are some photos from the gathering of kids from countries as diverse as Austria, Finland , Belgium, Peru, France , Germany, Denmark and Japan:

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September 16: An email received
Hi Akira.
I am Dave Carlson (63) and I live in Two Harbors, Minnesota.
I spent over 20 years in the Navy mostly in Japan.
I have three children who are half Japanese.  My oldest Dave Jr. lives in Kirkland, WA with his Japanese wife Masumi.  He works for Nintendo in Washington.
My two daughters live in Japan, Lorie lives in Tokyo with her Japanese husband and they have one child (my only grandchild) Shoto.  My other daughter Julia is single and lives in Kyoto.  She works for a Japanese textile firm.
I have always loved Japan and the Japanese people.  My favorite hobby is listening to Enka Music.   My favorite Enka singer is Ayako Fuji.
Well I hope you have a good time here.
I almost forgot to tell you and I'm sure you might know.  That NHK WORLD NEWS has a really good website where you can keep up to date on news and things happening in Japan.  They offer some really good documentries too!

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Akira is #77 on the Ely Memorial High School football team, as shown in the following photos.  He has found an explanation of American football in Japanese for his friends back home:

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Friday, September 6 brought the opening of Ely's Harvest Moon Festival, which lasts through the weekend.  Since this was also the day of the first home football game, players wore their game jerseys to school and at lunchtime they all came over to the festival to enjoy the food at the various concession stands.  On the right is Akira in his football jersey, waiting to sample some local fair food and on the left, you can see #77 on the sidelines at the game this evening.  Go Timberwolves!

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From Ward Nelson:
Akira and I went fishing on Saturday.  This is the first fish he ever caught in America - Burntside Lake - August 31, 2013

Smile for the Camera....

The last day of Summer was also spent on Burntside Lake getting to know some new friends.  After time on (and off) the swim platform, the group headed for the boat house in a paddle boat.

Before we all get WET!!!

That is one full boat!

Once everyone was dried off, Akira showed them what their names would look like when they were written with Japanese characters.