Seven Coretta Scott King Young Women’s Leadership Academy (CSK) students and two teachers have embarked on the journey of a lifetime as they boarded a direct flight to Tokyo, Japan.
For the past couple of years, the Japanese government has provided CSK with salary assistance to launch its program in Japanese. CSK is the only APS school that offers a Japanese language program.
This past summer, CSK was granted the opportunity to go to Japan through a travel grant with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan. The program, which is called The Kakehashi Project, is a government-funded grassroots exchange program that brings groups of Americans to Japan for engaging, focused and customized experiences.
In Japanese, kakehashi means building bridges.
“Without opportunities like this, our students would not have the chance to see the world and connect with people who are different than they are,” APS director of multi-lingual programs and services Dr. Margaret McKenzie said. “Travelling and studying abroad is life changing.”
While in Japan, the students will tour Tokyo before spending three nights with a host family in Atlanta’s sister city Fukuoka, Japan, where they will be greeted by the mayor and present a gift and letter of thanks on behalf of Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens. The scholars will also visit their future sister high school in Fukuoka.
“We are looking forward to working with our partner school in Japan, and we’re hoping in the near future to welcome a group of students from Fukuoka so we can really establish an annual exchange with the students here at CSK,” McKenzie said.
A week before the scholars left for Japan, CSK was visited by Mio Maeda, the consulate general of Japan, his wife, and the vice consul Miki Nakao. During their visit to CSK, the ambassadors joined a Japanese language class where the students introduced themselves in Japanese and played a quick game of Pictionary without using English.
“The students are amazing,” CSK Japanese instructor Kimie Briem said. “It’s an amazing opportunity that came to us. I’m so excited for them to go and be able to see what they’ve learned about. They’ve seen (Japan) through the media, and now they’ll be able to witness what it’s like and use their Japanese.”
The students also got the chance to practice their calligraphy with the ambassadors using authentic brushes to create the character for “water” in Japanese.
Maeda was also given a school tour and presented a gift to CSK principal Eulonda Washington.
“The visit was exciting because I’m from Japan and from my work I’m very keen to know how the Japanese education is going,” he said. “They will experience a lot of the different cultures and food (in Japan) and the language as well. I hope that they will have a lot of good memories of Japan and I hope they can be a kind of bridge between Japan and Atlanta.”
Brianna Love, a junior at CSK, was one of the seven scholars who was selected to make the trip. She was packed a week in advance with all of her devices and her sketchbook ready for the trip. She’s looking forward to seeing Mt. Fuji, the Tokyo Tower, cultural landmarks, art and tasting authentic Japanese cuisine.
“When I was told about the Japan trip I was like, ‘Oh, this is really cool.’ This is something I really wanted to do because I wanted to go to Japan anyway ever since I was little because I like the culture and the language and the food and the art, but mostly the food,” Love said. “I feel like the best kind of experience is living it and seeing it yourself. You can learn about Japan as much as you want, but there’s nothing compared to seeing Mt. Fuji or eating at a regular ramen place in Japan or visiting a host family, staying with them, and learning the experience of what it’s like to actually be there. I think experience is the best teacher.”
This opportunity for the CSK students has been in the works for a while. The school offers five other language courses including Spanish, French, Chinese and German. The school is already working on trying to organize a trip to France in 2024 and then China the year after.
“This is just the culminating event to our vision and goal for our students to graduate as globally conscious scholars. The fact that our students are getting an opportunity to travel abroad and spend a full week in Japan is just heart-warming for me,” Washington said. “Being a STEM school, we want to make sure that our students stay current and are globally conscious. In ensuring that that happens, our goal is to make sure our students travel to a different country every year.”